RA Podcast

Joe Delon loves music. You might think that would (or should) be self-evident in someone who DJs for a living, but the electronic music world would be a better place if everyone cared and thought as much as he did. In addition to being an increasingly in-demand DJ, he runs a stellar label, Welt Discos and moonlights as a music writer, with a beloved Substack newsletter that he usually updates twice a week. A blend of touring DJ travelogue and mix recommendations, it's a rich source of information and music from an artist with a warm, friendly voice—and perhaps more importantly, impeccable taste. It's that taste that has endeared him to many dance music fans around the world over the last few years, developing a dedicated fanbase who greet every new mix with bated breath (including, hopefully, this one). He's something of a record digger, but not in the clichéd way—he just loves to find records new and old full of melody, springy rhythms and a generally quirky, positive vibe. The music he selects often has an '80s tinge to it, even when it's not from the '80s, but it's hard to pin down what he plays, both because his sets are so unpredictable, and because it wouldn't be fair. His RA Podcast, as he explains below, is meant to sum up his last year of DJing, a carefully put together selection of favourites from 2022 (meaning records he played that year, not that came out last year). As always, it's a mix of familiar and far-flung records, mixed with Delon's breezy, unique style. Part of the reason why people have come to love his DJing so much is that it just kind of puts a smile on your face. Listen and you'll see. @joedelon Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/872

"I'm usually the first person to label Valentine's Day a commercial scam," says Kikelomo in the interview below, "however I recently realised that sharing music and connecting with people through sound is one of the ultimate expressions of love for me." When the Berlin-based DJ sent in her mix to RA, she subtitled it "All about love." It's nearly two hours of dance music that radiates warmth, positive energy and compassion, expressed through the wide, almost kaleidoscopic genre lens that Kikelomo has made her own. House, jungle, electro, hip-hop, you name it. The mix is even split into two distinct sides, like an old-school cassette mixtape. In addition to being a great and adventurous DJ, Kikelomo also started @orokoradio, a station based in Accra, that connects the Ghanaian capital—and other African cities—with the usual electronic music hotspots, and showcases homegrown talent and sounds through a platform of their own making. It's all part of her mission as a DJ to not only share music and love, but also to connect, uplift and create real community, as she also discusses below. It's not just a buzzword for Kikelomo, but a mission. @kikelomooo Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/871

People usually talk about Berlin, London, New York when discussing electronic music hotspots, and Paris doesn't always get its due. Case in point? It produced Jennifer Cardini, one of the most distinctive DJs to to ever come out of the city. (She's lived in Germany for a while, but the point stands.) Her sound lands somewhere between disco, house and EBM, rooted in a groovy, post-modern chug. You'll hear nu-disco, industrial, techno and electro too, usually built around big hooks. It's a sound that is not only instantly recognizable, but instantly likable. As a producer, Cardini also deserves her flowers. She's been putting out records since the mid-'90s, and with her first label Correspondant, she's built up a rock-solid catalogue from artists like Fort Romeau, Man Power, Cormac and more. More recently she started the Dischi Autunno imprint, a place for more crossover-friendly music that indulges Cardini's tastes for all things melodic (and maybe a little goth). Cardini's RA Podcast is a beautiful summary of all these ideas and influences. It's hard and banging, sure, but also lithe and athletic. There are plenty of tracks with the surge of EBM or the stab of industrial. Lots of reverb. Decadent melodies undergirded by tough drum patterns. And it's paced as expertly as you'd expect from someone who's been DJing for over 30 years. In the interview below, Cardini says she "loves how the young generation is digesting four decades of club / rave culture," and you can hear that history living and breathing in Cardini's DJing, too. @jennifercardini Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/870

We're not in the habit of quoting press materials all the time, but in Kajetan Łukomski's case, it feels appropriate. The first sentence of his bio is "Avtomat is a person with way too many interests." If you know any artists from Poland's wide-ranging, always-growing electronic music scene, chances are he's one of them. He's a DJ, producer, organizer and activist, once a member of the queer feminist collective Oramics, and is endlessly passionate about supporting, spreading and playing music from the Central European and Eastern European regions. With roots in metal, goth and electroclash, there's a certain spikiness to Łukomski's style, but also a polyglot knowledge and a hunger for new sounds. Lately he's been trying to mix club music with Polish folk traditions, which is the mission of Łukomski's RA Podcast, but it's also just the jumping off point. In these almost four hours of expert blending, genre-jumping and incredible pacing, Łukomski touches on almost every style of dance music you could think of, with aplomb and occasionally surprise (like that irresistible Bloc Party edit). If you can, it's worth digesting all in one sitting, so you can truly appreciate the ground he covers. @avtomatmusic Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/869

Before she was Femanyst, Akua Grant was called The Lady Blacktronika, also known as the First Lady Of Beatdown. Beatdown was a type of of ultra-deep house characterized by creamy chords, soulful melodies and, in Grant's case, honeyed vocals. She ran an integral label called Sound Black Recordings, home to some of her best tracks. But around 2017, she turned towards what was essentially the polar opposite: industrial-tinged super hard techno, full of distortion and anger. This is where we find Grant now, as Femanyst, with a mix that shows off heavy-duty techno that still has a heart. She started her own new label, called Dark Carousel, and has released on Paula Temple's Noise Manifesto. She manages to take some of the hardest techno around and imbue it with her signature melodic style. This is probably one of the toughest RA Podcasts yet, but it's also full of feeling, dynamism and tension. Get your best listening setup ready and sink in for two hours. @msladyblacktronika Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/868

Name a genre, and you can bet that Luis Garban has tried his hand at it once or twice. Once a staple of the mid-'00s IDM and breakcore scene—think Tigerbeat6—as Cardopusher, Garban found a temporary home in the dubstep scene afterwards, before shooting off in what felt like a million directions. He might be the only artist to release on both Hyperdub and Boysnoize Records. He makes music that can sound like the future or the past, sometimes both at once, and the Venezuelan-born, Spain-based producer's name is shorthand for musical adventurism and variety. Last year, things got even wilder with the debut of Safety Trance, a new alias that explores pan-Latin club music, with a focus on collaboration and shorter, structured songs. (Artists he's worked with include Arca, Iceboy Violet and Virgen Maria.) It's some of the best and most creative work of his career, riding a larger Latin techno wave producing some of the best music around these days. If that weren't enough, returning to Cardopusher, Garban has a career-best EP on the way for EVAR Records, pulling together the various strands of the project into a multi-genre, Gen-Z-friendly raveathon. Loaded with original tracks from both projects, RA Podcast could be billed as Cardopusher vs. Safety Trance, with highlights coming from Atari Teenage Riot, VTSS and Venetian Snares, which should give you an idea for the kind of controlled chaos you're in for with this one. @cardopusher Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/867

Roughly ten years ago—if we pretend the peak pandemic year-and-a-half doesn't count—Lars Dales and Maarten Smeets first came together as Detroit Swindle, before changing their name to Dam Swindle towards the end of 2020. The original name was meant as a tribute to one of their favorite musical legacies, but recognizing that it didn't come across how they meant it, the duo changed their name to pay homage to their other favourite place: Amsterdam. Dales and Smeets have become core parts of the Amsterdam house scene in their time, especially with their excellent Heist Recordings label, which they started back in 2013 (hey, now *that's* literally ten years ago). It's easy to understand why the duo have become so popular. In person and onstage, they're goofy, funny guys, the kind of people you might describe as the life of the party. And musically, they're massively appealing, marrying a European tech house strut to deeper and more soulful inspirations, a preoccupation reflected in Heist's impressive artist roster: Ge-Ology, Demuir, Byron The Aquarius, Matthew Herbert and more. Their RA Podcast comes at a time of reflection and change, looking back on the decade-plus history of both act and label and plotting their new album, which they say will expand their horizons even more. The mix is eclectic but smooth, pulling together tracks from the likes of Omar-S, Lil Silva, Ruf Dug and Genius Of Time (with one of last year's most underrated tracks). It's always a treat to hear consummate club DJs in a more relaxed mode, and this one's no exception. @damswindle Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/866

When it comes to the sound of modern-day techno—fast, melodic and polyglot, working in genres like trance and gabber—it's hard to find an artist more clearly representative than Anetha. The French DJ encompasses all these influences with style, landing on a lithe sound that's both heavy and nimble, earning her a first residency at Paris party Blocaus (and, currently, Awakenings and Fuse, among others) and appearances on labels like Work Them and Oaks. What really sets Anetha apart, though, is her commitment to developing and uplifting the artists around her. She launched her own label, Mama Told Ya, in 2019 with a unique and heartwarming concept: each release would highlight an artist, often young or new to the game, and feature one collaboration with Anetha herself. It's a move that turns the usual label-artist dynamic on its head, making each new record a fully-fledged collaboration, and lending her own gravitas to the artist she features. And a year later she started an agency—or what she calls a "creative engine"—to help those artists in a more holistic way. Her RA Podcast is a perfect way to start 2023: with energy and verve, and a perfect balance of light and dark. This is techno at its most creative, dark and discombobulated beats cut through with glowing vocal samples from some of the most recognizable songs of the past five years. If you wanted to explain to someone what techno sounds like in 2023, you'd do well to start here. @anethamusic Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/865

Skee Mask is one of dance music's greatest crossover stories of the past decade, with new albums greeted with the attention usually reserved for an Aphex Twin or a Caribou. ("Loved seeing this on r/indieheads," said one Reddit user, on the release of the 2021 LP Pool.) It's not hard to understand why: albums like Compro, he blends well-worn dance music tropes with incredible, detailed soundscapes and spine-tingling melodies. And on his 12-inches, he brings that sensibility to the dance floor, with an approach probably best described as articulate. Even on his most ambient of tracks, everything is in its right place. Along with founders the Zenker Brothers, his music outlines everything that makes Munich outfit Ilian Tape one of the best techno labels going. On the decks, it's kind of a different story. It might surprise you if you only know his albums, but Skee Mask is an incredible DJ, balancing his predilection for hip-hop and UK-informed sounds with laser-focused techno. He can adapt to all sorts of situations—there's an incredible recording of him DJing with four of the best grime and drum & bass MCs in the business—and on his RA Podcast he focuses on the techno side of things, with nearly two hours of pacey techno and creative mixing, with dips into acid, electro, garage and more. It's a party-starting mix from a genuine star, perfect for getting through the holiday doldrums or pre-gaming your NYE plans. Like Skee Mask's best records, it's something to enjoy in any number of settings. @skeemask-music Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/864

You might have first heard of Earth Trax under his original alias, The Phantom. Or maybe his given name, Bartosz Kruczyński, which he uses for gorgeous ambient music. Or Pejzaż, where he cuts up Polish records from his vast collection. Or as part of Ptaki, another sample-based project he did with fellow Warsaw resident Jaromir Kamiński. You get the idea—dude makes a lot of music. And a lot of it is very good. Earth Trax is the project that really made us swoon, with a soft-focus, sunset-hued meld of techno, breakbeat, progressive house and trance. On wonderful records like LP1, melancholy is the operative word, but Kruczyński isn't exactly a sadsack. It's more complex than that, nailing the tears-on-the-dance-floor vibe with the part that many people forget: it's still club music. That's why tracks like "Dream Pop," which kicks off this mix, are so successful—they're heavy but never weighed down by emotion, with a skip in their step and a robust low-end to go with the sighing vocals. Kruczyński's RA Podcast is something of an excavation of this sound, using his own tracks and those of like-minded producers to sketch out a style that's equal parts rousing and pensive, midtempo but still propulsive. Over two and a half hours he lets these tracks breathe and leisurely mixes them together, almost like an old-school progressive house double mix CD but in the more vibrant, varied clothes of today—before it starts to unravel into an extended, beatless outro that's worth sticking all the way until the end for. @earthtraxonline Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/863