RA Exchange

"I always find inspiration from my city." The DJ and producer talks about her love of Naples, moving from the underground to the mainstream and her new audiovisual show. If you've ever gone to big room techno hubs like Time Warp, DC-10, Awakenings or Rotterdam Rave, then Anfisa Letyago's name should be familiar to you. But Letyago actually comes from underground roots; before she played to thousands of people from the beaches of Ibiza, she was releasing on legacy labels like Hotflush, Kompakt, Nervous Records and Rekids, and collaborating with old guard artists like DJ Pierre. In this RA Exchange, the Naples-based DJ and producer talks about the strategy she employed to make it to the top. Having become enamoured with Carl Cox during her first days of raving in Naples as a university student, she flew to one of his gigs and stood outside his hotel with her tracks on a USB. She was delighted when he took them and played them in his set that night. Shortly thereafter, Cox booked Letyago to play his curated stage at Ultra Music Festival and has since acted as a close mentor, teacher and friend. Today, Letyago is preparing a live audiovisual show, Partenope, which straddles the boundary of techno and vocal-led pop. She also started her own label, NSDA—an homage to a volcanic island near Naples—and is preparing her first full-length album to be released on a sub-label of Sony Music. She also reveals some facts that fans may not know about her despite the intimate moments from her life she shares online. Listen to the episode in full.

James Massiah, a South London-born poet and NTS Radio host, dives deep into his artistic evolution influenced by London's vibrant Afro-Caribbean sounds. He reflects on the hedonism and joyful living that shape his work, contrasting it with his upbringing in the church. With a rich blend of genres from funk to dancehall, Massiah shares insights on personal growth, navigating relationships, and the transformative power of music. His discussions highlight how experiences like the Notting Hill Carnival celebrate cultural heritage while impacting modern UK music.

"Dancing has always been visceral to me." The DJ and producer talks about bringing movement into her music practice and the role mythology and meditation plays in art and life. The Italian-French DJ, producer and dancer Giulia Fournier-Mercadante—AKA GiGi FM—has had a varied, multidisciplinary career. Originally a dancer, Fournier-Mercadante received a scholarship for the New York City Ballet and the contemporary dance outfit Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater as a teenager. Finding the dancing world difficult to navigate, especially in its approach to body image, she graduated and moved to London to focus on music. It was there that she discovered techno and its capacity to heal. She started hosting a regular show on NTS, getting booked locally and then touring around the world. Today, Fournier-Mercadante has integrated dance into her productions, which use motion sensors to transform physical movement into MIDI. Her use of her body as her basic instrument has led to a unique, kinetic sound palette that defines all of her tracks. In this Exchange, she unpacks how she's worked with this technique and rediscovered her love of dancing, as well as how spirituality, dream states and astrology inform her life and work. Listen to the episode in full.

Field recordist and musician KMRU discusses repatriating African sounds, the sociopolitical aspects of listening, and his new album with The Bug. He reflects on how technology has changed our listening habits, the use of electromagnetic microphones, and the importance of deep listening in artistic field recording.

Irish duo Bicep talk about their musical journey from Belfast to success, unpacking creative process and the influence of emotional trance. They share insights on CHROMA project, creating dynamic productions for the dance floor. A deep dive into their minimalism, collaborations, and unique rollout strategies. Reflecting on challenges during the pandemic and teasing future plans including a third album and ambient single.

Charli XCX discusses her new album BRAT, calling it a club record that reflects her heart. She shares her journey from DJing at warehouse parties as a teen to reinventing herself in the pop space. Charli XCX explores the challenges of making challenging music for a broad audience while staying true to her artistic vision.

"It's a dream to share a passion with your best friend." The German duo talk about life on the road and writing their first album in six years. Together, Felix Wagner and Aaron Röbig make up the dynamic duo FJAAK. As one of Germany's best-known nightlife exports, they've earned a reputation for being techno's "boy band," gracing the stages of festivals and clubs all over the world for the last ten-plus years. Wagner and Röbig met in Spandau, an area just outside of Berlin, when they were both still in school. Equally interested in music (especially hip-hop), they started working on beats together alongside two other friends. The four-person group turned into FJAAK, and when they all moved to the city centre together after finishing their studies, they started living collectively and touring the project, achieving traction quickly. FJAAK is now just a duo—the group dwindled from four people to three, and then, in 2019, to just Röbig and Wagner. They claim they're closer to soulmates than friends; they know everything about each other and seem so in tune as to be almost telepathic. "The super power we've evolved over the years is to live a harmonic life together," Wagner said. In this RA Exchange, Röbig and Wagner talk about navigating through life with someone by their side, their thoughts on equality and meritocracy in the music industry, how they work together in the studio, their record label and their new album, FJAAK THE SYSTEM, which came out in May. Listen to the episode in full. This episode was recorded and filmed at Pirate Studios.

"I'm finally enjoying what I built." The DJ and producer talks about 30 years in the music industry and what it means to live a creative life. Caroline Hervé, AKA Kittin (FKA Miss Kittin), is a household name, primarily known for her contributions to the world of electroclash. As part of the duo Miss Kittin & The Hacker, Hervé wrote music that inspired a generation of artists drawn to electroclash's punky aesthetics, no-nonsense synth production and humorous, ironic lyrics and vocal delivery. In this Exchange, she unpacks how the electroclash scene became a home for artists seeking to push back against the rigidity of techno, ushering in a vanguard of performers like Peaches who created a safe space for queerness and unconventional femininity in the early 00s. Now 50 years old, Hervé is still very much active on the touring circuit. Behind the decks she's as likely to play synth wave and electro as she is to play peak-time techno, and in the studio, her creativity knows no bounds. Much of her latest chapter has been defined by learning to age gracefully in the music industry, especially given the undue expectations and double standards placed on women. "I've made a decision never to touch my face," she says. "My boobs are getting bigger. I'm gaining weight. I'm reaching menopause soon. But these are things we need to talk about." Listen to the episode in full.

"My place of rebirth was New York." The DJ and producer discusses Brooklyn's queer ballroom scene and advocating for Munich's queer community at BLITZ Club. BASHKKA is a name you might recognise from festival lineups. In fact, it seems to be everywhere these days. The Munich-based artist has seemingly blown up in the past 24 months, but her ascent is well-deserved. The Munich-based DJ has been a resident at BLITZ Club for two years since returning from a decade-long stint in New York, where she quickly found family with Brooklyn's trans community. While she's now living back in Germany, the experience ignited a lifelong commitment to her advocacy for the cultural, political and de-colonial advancement of electronic music. She is an activist for Southwest Asian and North African artists across the scene, especially those from queer femme backgrounds or who have been otherwise marginalised from the mainstream dance music narrative. In this interview with the Exchange's senior producer Chloe Lula, BASHKKA talks about her roots and how the dichotomy of growing up to a Turkish family in Bavaria—and then living within the trans community in New York—has shaped her creativity and her outlook on family and life. She also talks about her debut EP, Maktub, on Nene H's label Umay, where she explores a mixture of ballroom, ghetto tech, house and the legacy of her years in New York. According to the artist, it's a "hot stew of seduction"—and it's only a prelude of what's to come. Listen to the episode in full.

"We were searching for our own voice." The Chicago artist talks about pioneering the sound of acid house and the spirit of experimentation in early dance music. The Chicago-based Nathaniel Pierre Jones—AKA DJ Pierre—may be best known for forming the "squelch" we now call acid. When he and his friends Spanky and Herb J picked up a TB-303 in a pawn shop, they captured the sound of the knobs being turned as a pattern started to run. While this wasn't how the instrument was intended to be used, they were enthralled by the result, reproducing it and releasing it as an EP called Acid Tracks under the name Phuture in 1987. The result was the birth of the acid house era and a new, international musical craze. In this RA Exchange recorded live at International Music Summit in Ibiza, Jones retraces the acid craze and the nature of experimentation and risk-taking more generally. In his view, there's a marked absence of this mindset in contemporary dance music as many producers have become accustomed to using sample packs, presets and generally operating within workflows that stymie originality. At the end of the interview, he raises important questions around if and how the music being released today enhances our lives, as well as what a truly transcendent and mutually supportive industry could look like. Listen to the episode in full.