RA Podcast

As part of RA2122, our ongoing celebration of 21 years of club culture, we'll be featuring some of our favourite DJs from around the world, highlighting the parties or clubs most important to their lives in dance music. DJ Voices will be playing our RA2122 party in New York this Saturday, November 29th.

DJ Voices is a prime example of an artist that really can do it all. The New York-based artist, originally from Florida, has been an integral part of New York's electronic music as a DJ and as a booker at one of the city's best venues, Nowadays. Voices got her footing as a selector as a founding member of the DJ collective Working Women, but these days she performs solo through her Nowadays residency and her radio show on The Lot, Nothing In Moderation. Her sets are known for their psychedelic dynamism—her selection, with which she prioritizes "energy and drama over genre," often flits from rolling low-end music, uptempo tracks (that she then slows all the way down) and wonky leftfield beats.

"It would be hard to overstate how much Nowadays is part of my story at this point, personally and professionally," Voices told RA in the following interview. Her approach to assembling this mix she recorded for us makes that abundantly clear. The mix she recorded for RA—which sprawls out over almost three hours—features tracks that she has either played in her five-year tenure at Nowadays or that she plans to play there in the future. She organized the set in a similar way to the way she goes about her Nowadays sets. She kicks off with fast and nimble bass music ("I like to start fast in hopes of people dancing half-time"), then transitions into a knotty web of dubstep and bright percussive tracks and closes with weightless jungle. The playlist she sourced from to create this mix featured music from every Nowadays resident. It's this same thoughtfulness and meticulous attention to detail that has made her a household name in her local scene.

For our RA2122 series, we've been focusing on dyed-in-the-wool DJs paying tribute to the places that were most important to them. But what if you're an electronic music superstar and you didn't necessarily get your musical education in a club? That's how we come to Marie Davidson, a Canadian artist who counts among the world's most engaging and electrifying live performers, mixing techno with electroclash and post-punk for a sound that feels familiar but totally new at the same time. In 2019, she announced she was retiring from live club music, and then formed a band with fellow Montreal scenesters. But on her RA Podcast, she returns to dance music with a cannonball-sized splash.

To hear her tell it, Davidson only became interested in DJing recently—she's only been doing it for a few months. It's a new way for her to explore club music and also pay tribute to the artists she loves, without putting her whole self out there in the same way required of live performances.

But you could never tell that Davidson is new to DJing. Her RA Podcast is a masterpiece of modern techno building and pacing, dipping into straight-up trance several times in a way that reminds us of Sasha's legendary Global Underground 013: Ibiza mix CD, with an hour of steady tension rewarded with one hell of a melodic payoff. She sounds like she's ready to play at some of the world's best clubs, proof positive you don't need to have the usual backstory to be an excellent DJ.

@mariedavidson_official

Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/857

As part of RA2122, our ongoing celebration of 21 years of club culture, we'll be featuring some of our favourite DJs from around the world, highlighting the parties or clubs most important to their lives in dance music.

Chris Clayton, AKA Karizma, takes DJing seriously. But he also knows that it's about having fun, or at least helping other people to have fun. This is the formula that makes him such a fantastic DJ, and one of the most technically skilled around (he uses CDJs like few others can). He practices two hours every day, and has been DJing since he was 13. For him, there was no specific party or club that made him the DJ he is today—it was the whole Baltimore scene he grew up in. He is the party.

His approach is deeply informed with his history in Baltimore, a city with its own vibrant music scene that always taken a different tack than the rest of the major American undergrounds. House, techno, hip-hop, jazz (and of course Baltimore club), there have never been any boundaries for as long as Clayton has been DJing, which makes his DJ sets as musically adventurous as they are technical. This hour-long set is a neatly-packaged example of his genius, leaning on the jazzier side of his sound, featuring plenty of Atjazz records, his own wide-ranging material and killer edits of Rihanna and Kendrick Lamar.

As part of RA2122, our ongoing celebration of 21 years of club culture, we'll be featuring some of our favourite DJs from around the world, highlighting the parties or clubs most important to their lives in dance music.

The first time we featured DJ Nobu on the RA Podcast, over ten years ago, we called him "one of Japan's best DJs." In hindsight, i think we can all agree that the country qualifier is no longer necessary: he's one of the world's best DJs, bar none. An absolute master at curating and mixing techno, Nobu has helped to inspire a Japanese school of techno that is psychedelic, hypnotic and often very pretty, without losing the genre's oomph or edge. And he's more popular than ever around the world, playing some of the best parties and clubs in pretty much any country or city you could name.

But DJ Nobu's roots and heart are close to home. Frustrated with techno in the Japanese capitol, he created his own party in his neighbouring hometown, Chiba, where nightlife was less pretentious and the vibe was a little looser. Future Terror quickly became known as one of Japan's premiere techno parties, and paved the way not only for Nobu himself, but many other Japanese DJs who Nobu and his later partner Haruka gave the chance to shine. The party also recently celebrated its landmark 20th anniversary with its first-ever party in London.

This mix is a direct tribute and encapsulation of Future Terror, what Nobu calls a "condensed story" of the series focusing on the more outré elements at the fore—an "awareness of techno" with plenty of more leftfield tracks thrown in. What follows might be a little gentler than you'd expect from Nobu, but it's all top-tier techno mixed with an expert hand.

@djnobu_bitta

Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/855

As part of RA2122, our ongoing celebration of 21 years of club culture, we'll be featuring some of our favourite DJs from around the world, highlighting the parties or clubs most important to their lives in dance music.

It's safe to say that there would be no house music, and no dance music as we know it, without François Kevorkian. The French-born, New York-based DJ started remixing disco records in the late-'70s when he was in his early 20s and became a pioneer of the form alongside names like Larry Levan, Tom Moulton and Walter Gibbons. And though he would become a house icon, he became especially known for the trippy "dub" mixes on the B-sides of records, which often eschewed the structure and vocals of the songs he was remixing in favour of excursions into the unknown.

It's that legacy that led him to Deep Space, his Monday-night residency at the once-legendary Meatpacking District club Cielo, which was one of the most beloved (and best-sounding) rooms in Manhattan. Deep Space started at 2003 and ran weekly for 15 years, eventually moving to Output in Brooklyn. The idea was to explore "dub" in all its forms, and to play all kinds of music while manipulating it in real time. The slogan was "Live On The Mixing Board."

At Deep Space you would hear all kinds of music. Dub, reggae, dub techno, drum & bass—and later on, as you''ll hear in this mix, dubstep—sure, but also disco, R&B, funk, old-school house. All music was dub in Kevorkian''s hands, and over the years Deep Space became one of the most renowned and consistent parties in New York, a place of refuge and discovery every single Monday (and, eventually, Sunday). This four-hour recording allows you to almost experience what it was like to be in that room—you can even hear the crowd whooping and cheering—as Kevorkian journeys through ultra-deep techno, dubstep and a string of funky disco and post-disco tracks. It''s a sound all his own, and though it was recorded 13 years ago, still sounds full of possibility and potential. Like the future.

@fknyc

Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/854

As part of RA2122, our ongoing celebration of 21 years of club culture, we'll be featuring some of our favourite DJs from around the world, highlighting the parties or clubs most important to their lives in dance music. First up we have Tama Sumo and Lakuti, both residents at Berlin's Panorama Bar, the house-focused room upstairs at Berghain. Panorama Bar has played host to thousands—if not millions—of people's most formative dance floor experiences, with an unparalleled vibe, near-perfect sound and window blinds that have taken their own place in dance music mythology.

The duo's mix highlights the style that Tama Sumo and Lakuti have brought to the club and represents its anything-goes energy, mixing tracks from iconoclasts like Hieroglyphic Being (including one of his best-ever tracks) in with old-school favorites from Reel By Real, Larry Heard and even Ministry, moving from house to industrial to disco without batting an eyelid. Tama Sumo and Lakuti's loose but impeccable flow ties together house music history with a deep love and knowledge of all genres and, perhaps most importantly, the desire and know-how to just make people dance. We couldn't be more thrilled to feature Tama Sumo and Lakuti for the first mix in our birthday series, and we hope that you enjoy it as much as we do.

Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/853

This week's RA Podcast marks something of a debut for Infinity Division, the new solo project from Canadian artist Ash Luk, best known as one half of EBM-techno duo Minimal Violence. (Minimal Violence had itself been a solo project since last year, when cofounder Lida P left the group.) Getting his start in Vancouver's punk scene as part of the band Lié, Luk's approach to dance music is informed not only by those origins but by Western Canada's long history with industrial music and techno (spot Skinny Puppy and Tunnel Canary in the tracklist). 


Minimal Violence first impressed us with their hardware-focused house and techno, a harder-edged version of the sound that was sweeping Vancouver at the time, before moving on to Ninja Tune sub-label Technicolour and then Tresor for a series of records that saw their sound become more expansive, sharper and more melodic, incorporating not just techno and punk influences but also trance, EBM and more. These are the genres that feed into Infinity Division, and Luk's RA Podcast hurtles through everything from old Prodigy, '90s German hard trance, Canadian breakcore and new tracks from his project. This is heavy dance music that's also heavy on melody, unafraid of huge crescendoes that hit that sweet spot between punishment and euphoria. Buckle up.

Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/852

For some dance music fans, Hamish & Toby may be their new favourite DJs thanks to a recent US tour and excellent sets at festivals like Glastonbury, Dimensions, Houghton and Freerotation. 2022 was, after all, a breakthrough year for the UK duo. But in their own, close-knit world of Discogs fanatics and vinyl purists, Hamish Cole and Toby Wareham are admired and established names. They met while studying in Leeds, bonding over a shared love of wiggly bombs at countless clubs and hazy afterparties. They ran events (Butter Side Up, Dog Eat Dog), DJ’d tirelessly and continued to dig for obscure gems. Within a few years, they were both working full-time music jobs in London, booking Dimensions Festival (Hamish) and The Pickle Factory (Toby). (Hamish is now a director at Dimensions.) All in all, they’ve dedicated the past 15 years of their lives to dance music.

For all their behind-the-scenes work, Hamish & Toby’s true love is DJing together. They’re known for their long, expressive sets that go, in their own words, “all over the map.” Their RA Podcast, which was recorded live at Philadelphia party Subsurface in May, is a four-hour odyssey through golden-era house, tech house and UK garage. Proper party music, in other words. According to the duo, they were “fully locked in, as comfortable as we’ve ever felt DJing.” It really shows.

@hamishcole

@tobynicholas

Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/851

Whether you're hearing a track or a DJ set, you can usually tell it's Nene H pretty quickly. In just a few years, Beste Aydin has developed a very specific approach within the realm of techno. She inhabits the genre yet colours just enough outside the lines without losing the plot—or the pull—entirely. The focus is on fun, on groove and on hooks, with sets that dip into trance, electro, ghetto house and even hints of hyperpop, tying in neon threads into techno's all-black garb.

She's used techno as a jumping off point for orchestral and choral performances, as well as the poignant expression of grief (on her stellar debut album). She's become a regular at Berghain and groundbreaking festivals like CTM, traversing a highbrow-lowbrow line that posits that every kind of dance music deserves the highbrow treatment. Her RA Podcast is an irresistible hour of techno full of what she calls "Neneisms," turns into pop hooks amidst hulking techno beats and dips into funky, electro-informed beats.

@nenetreat

Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/850

Depending on who you ask, Yousuke Yukimatsu is the best DJ in the world. Or at least in Japan. The eccentric Osaka-born, Tokyo-based DJ has built up an arsenal of fans and disciples—most famously Tzusing—who revere his cross-genre approach and knack for out-of-this-world blends. Case in point: he recently released a mostly ambient mixtape that somehow felt more gripping and propulsive than many techno DJ sets. He also used that release, Midnight Is Comin, to highlight Japan's underrepresented experimental electronic music scene, another sign of his wide-ranging and unusual tastes.

To go with his voracious hunger for all kinds of music, Yukimatsu can play alll different kinds of sets, from the meditative to the peak-time, all with the blending ingenuity and expert pacing we've come to expect. Just check his mind-blowing Boiler Room set from 2020. If that performance was nightclub madness and Midnight Is Comin was a slowly unfurling coil of downcast textures and moods, then Yukimatsu's RA Podcast is something in-between.

Over two captivating hours, Yukimatsu brings in beats only to jettison them, returning several times to artists like Palmistry, Tzusing and Ryo Murakami. He anchors the mix with familiar tracks and voices before letting it drift out to sea again. It's also deeply personal, focusing on tracks from people he played with at his Zone Unknown parties in Osaka and Kobe, as well as his friends who participated in Midnight Is Comin.

Some of these blends need to be heard to believed. But more important is the pacing: the mix moves at such a slow but intuitive speed that it's almost tantric, the work of someone who knows how to keep the party going at a simmer without giving into the temptation to go faster. (He even says that the mix was supposed to be longer.) With hooky tracks from Palmistry and Equiknoxx up against explosions of noise and heavy EQing, Yukimatsu's RA Podcast is like dipping your head above and below water, soaking in and appreciating the beauty of both realms at once.

@yousukeyukimatsu

Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/849