RA Exchange

"The Beatles blew my mind." The LA artist talks about her new album—Something in the Room She Moves—writing music while pregnant and how she works in the studio. The LA-based composer and musician Julia Holter has garnered a reputation for releases that toe the hazy edge of shoegaze and dream pop, always skirting the contours of the electronic music world. On today's RA Exchange, she takes a deep dive into her sixth studio album, Something in the Room She Moves, with music editor Andrew Ryce. Holter talks about writing all but one of the songs while she was pregnant ("Evening Mood" even captures a sample of her child's ultrasound, recorded from her phone), which lends the album a warmth and tenderness unparalleled in any of her past releases. But it's also a somber record; her nephew died while she was recording it, an event that forced her to process the complexity and gravity of two conflicting, converging experiences while composing. For the technically inclined, Holter also discusses how she works in the studio and manages post-production. As the artist tells Ryce, she likes to play with resonant frequencies and processing that puts each of the sounds she records into the same sonic world on a record, using effects and composition tricks to give everything what she calls a "sensuous vibe." Something in the Room She Moves is out now on Domino Records. Listen to the episode in full.

"Humans think they're top of the hierarchy." The Live From Earth member talks about growing up in Sunshine Farms, the perils of competition in the music industry and how TikTok changed her career. You might know horsegiirL from her horse mask, her viral singles on TikTok or her hugely popular online videos. The DJ and producer—who famously never breaks character—has launched into popularity over the past two years, bringing her frenetic and contemporary style of hardstyle-meets-Europop mash-ups to dance floors around the world. Her fans, or "farmies," go crazy for her music, donning cowboy hats and pitchforks at all of her shows. In this episode of the RA Exchange, horsegiirL sits down with senior producer Chloe Lula to talk about her upbringing in Sunshine Farms and the key differences between the animal kingdom and the human world. They also discuss her involvement with the Berlin-based label Live From Earth Klub, an irreverent art and DJ collective featured as part of our latest cover story. (Two of the crew's other key artists, DJ Gigola and MCR-T, also mixed this week's RA Podcast.) Listen to the horsegiirL episode in full.

Mary Anne Hobbs, a trailblazing BBC Radio presenter, discusses her journey in championing leftfield electronic music and her project 'All Queens' promoting women in music. The power of radio in creating community, exploring Yoko Ono's impact, and celebrating female artists are key topics. The conversation also touches on personal growth, self-discovery, and heartfelt gratitude shared between the speakers.

"Every opportunity to learn something new is what's going to grow your craft as an artist." The Toronto star talks discipline and gaining self-confidence as a producer. Cindy Li, AKA Ciel, always seems to be one step ahead. The label head, DJ, producer and activist has a hard-won career that dance music producers dream of—when she's not playing underground institutions across the globe, maintaining radio residencies, planning her own parties or collaborating with her favourite artists, she's thinking about what's next. "I'm the type of person that I'll stay up trying to finish everything rather than going to bed knowing that I didn't finish everything on my list," she tells RA's Nyshka Chandran in this week's episode. The Toronto resident is a conservatory-trained pianist who uses the discipline she learnt from a lifetime of lessons to balance DJing and production. "For me, it is challenging to juggle both because they use very different parts of my brain," she describes. A deep digger whose love for atmospheric textures and '90s grooves influences her fresh take on UKG, tech-house and jungle, Li has been putting out music since 2017. She has various EPs and singles under her name, plus several joint releases with the likes of Dan Only, D.Tiffany and Priori but says she didn't always have the confidence for a solo full-length. "I never thought I could write an album," she admits. But after playing live for the first time at MUTEK Montréal in 2021, that changed, leading to the 2023 release of Homesick, her debut album. "Don't ever let fear influence your decision-making," she says, describing how that show pushed her to overcome lingering doubts in the studio. For more on Li's process, listen to the episode in full.

"I often myself being responsible for a film's music, but also fighting for its absence." The composer discusses movie scoring, his love of opera and his new album, Scope Neglect, on Mute Records. The multidisciplinary Australian artist Ben Frost might best be known for his score work: he's soundtracked Netflix shows like Dark and its spinoff 1899, as well as a number of major motion pictures and video games. While his formal studies were in visual art, he started experimenting with music-making from an early age, homing in on a unique sound that is truly a melange of his influences in punk, black metal, classical and modern minimalism. His unique approach to composition has led him to some extreme places to capture field recordings, like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Amazon rainforest and the empty hulls of fishing boats docked on the banks of Icelandic port towns. Artists like Steve Albini, Björk, Brian Eno and the band SWANS have tapped Frost to work with them, and he's performed extensively as a solo performer and as part of an A/V outfit at the world's biggest festivals and art world circuits. In this episode of the RA Exchange, he sits down with senior producer Chloe Lula to discuss his latest venture, a full-length album, Scope Neglect, on Mute. It pulls heavily from his proclivity for guitar music and metal, but still nods to the cinematic minimalism that has become one of his work's primary tropes. Frost dissects some of the recording techniques he used to make the record—he borrowed from the methods used by Mark Hollis of the band Talk Talk—as well as his studio practice, his love of opera and his approach to writing scores. Listen to the episode in full.

Daniel Avery, fabric resident, discusses his journey from a music fan to a successful DJ, his struggle with sudden fame, the balance between touring and production, eclectic influences in his music, and his upcoming album and fabric party series.

Our landmark 700th episode in partnership with Detroit’s Blueprint presents the first in a new three-part series exploring the untold history of Detroit techno from the perspective of the women who built it. The history of Detroit techno is often recounted in waves. First there was the Belleville Three—Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson, Derrick May—closely followed by a second cohort of artists who further developed the sound in the '90s. Names like Carl Craig, Octave One, Robert Hood, Jeff Mills and Mike Banks are among those that have been codified in the official annals of techno history. But there's another, lesser known story that is seldom told about the women who grew the scene right alongside them. Equally esteemed artists like DJ Minx (the founder of Women On Wax Recordings), K-Hand, DJ Cent, Stacey Hotwaxx Hale and more ran labels, collectives and DJ nights that aren't bestowed with the same credit as those from their male counterparts, and have consequently been lost in the chronicles of time. For the 700th episode of the RA Exchange, we counter correct this gender inequity with the first episode of a three-part series hosted and produced by the all-female Detroit collective and party series Blueprint. Alanna Greenlee, Janisa Nelson and Crystal Mioner embark on interviews that illuminate an alternative history of Detroit techno that unfurled alongside these better-documented techno waves, tracing the birth of a woman-led community that put mutual support at its heart and fought to earn respect from their male peers and the scene at large. Listen to the episode in full. Credits: Produced by Blueprint Hosts: Alanna Greenlee, Janisa Nelson, Crystal Mioner Guests: DJ Minx and DJ Cent Writer/Researcher: Crystal Mioner Technical Production: Janisa Nelson Consultant: John Collins Consultant: Conor Anderson

The Berghain resident talks about re-queering the goth scene, exploring a lighter side of his sound and preparing for marathon closing sets. Hayden Payne, AKA Phase Fatale, grew up fully immersed in the world of music; his dad is a recording engineer and musician, as are many members of his family. After joining post-punk outfits like Dream Affair and consuming a diet of new wave and synth from parties like Wierd in New York, Payne eventually relocated to Berlin, where he saw possibilities emerge around ways of fusing guitar music with sounds for the dance floor. It was only shortly after relocating that he landed a residency at Berghain and began releasing his own productions as a techno artist, becoming known for darker-edged sets and productions that fuse industrial, EBM and techno. In this episode of the RA Exchange, he talks to senior producer Chloe Lula about all of this and more, like "re-queering" the goth scene; exploring a lighter side of his sound with his Italo duo, Soft Crash; his label, BITE Records; and sustaining strong ties to dance floors in Kyiv and Tbilisi, two cities that he reflects as being refreshingly socially and politically motivated for queer artists living in the margins. His new EP as Soft Crash, NRG, is out now. Listen to the episode in full.

"Art and music are the same, they're just different dialects." The Chicago house music legend talks about co-curating the photo exhibit Walk The Night and nightlife's '90s heyday. Ron Trent grew up in Chicago, where he dreamed of being a musician from a young age. He would end up becoming one of the architects of the Chicago house sound and working alongside contemporaries like Chez Damier, and across the pond, Basic Channel. His label, Prescription Records, became a renowned purveyor of the deep house sound. He spread his vision from the American Midwest to New York, Europe and beyond. In this talk recorded live at Miami Art Week, Trent talks to Resident Advisor music critic Kiana Mickles about the songs and dance floors that shaped him in this early part of his musical trajectory. In addition to playing some of his favourite jazz, funk and disco songs, he reflects on clubs like Studio 54, Paradise Garage and The Warehouse, which he claims matured him as an artist and irrevocably shaped the trajectory of club culture. Trent was instrumental in co-curating an exhibit called Walk The Night (which premiered at this multidisciplinary event), a photographic homage to these spaces and other historic clubs around the world. To hear more about the legacy of Trent's favourite clubs and the music that shaped him, listen to the episode in full.

In this live talk with Tama Sumo, Lakuti and musclecars, the New York legend sets the record straight. DJ, producer and remixer Yvonne Turner was one of the only women instrumental in shaping New York's early house scene, yet her story has gone largely undocumented. Born in Harlem in 1953, she started DJing regularly by the late '70s, playing weekly parties in Flatbush and getting her musical education at The Loft. There, she says, she learned how "good music" should sound. It inspired her to start going to the studio and sharing her musical revelations with other people. As a woman producer, she was often relegated to the small print on records, bumped to associate or co-producer status or marked as a mixer instead of a remixer. Many of the male vocalists she worked with got credit for the music. But Turner penned some acclaimed house tracks, such as "Set Fire To Me," "Music Is The Answer" and the official remix of Whitney Houston's "I'm Your Baby Tonight." While Turner took a back seat for a few years, deciding to teach in elementary schools and wind down her touring, she recently got back in the studio and wants to set the record straight about the history of house and her place—and many other women's—within it. This conversation was moderated by Tama Sumo, Lakuti and the DJ duo musclecars live at Public Records in New York. Listen to the conversation in full.