RA Podcast

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1. EX.817 Chase & Status

   4 november 2026 · 56 min

   Afspelen
   Two decades in, the UK drum & bass duo are still filling stadiums. They talk staying hungry, resisting the algorithm and their eighth album, Generic Everything. Lees meer

   In 2003, Saul Milton and Will Kennard of Chase & Status were sending drum & bass demos to their heroes over AOL Instant Messenger. Two decades on, they're among the biggest acts in UK dance music. In 2016, they became the first UK electronic act to headline London's O2 Arena. Their productions have racked up more than two billion streams, and they've sold 2.6 million albums, more than four times as many as drum & bass's next-biggest act. In 2023, they had four records in the UK Top 40 at once, a run that helped win them the Brit Award for Producer of the Year.

   So what does a second act look like 20 years in? In this RA Exchange with music journalist Nathan Evans, Milton and Kennard dig into how they keep pushing forward. They discuss Generic Everything, a record about refusing to sound like everyone else in an age of algorithms and AI, and why they worry about what technology is doing to creative work. They also talk about how they choose collaborators, from Skrillex to Little Simz and D Double E, and how they've folded styles like baile funk into drum & bass. Listen to the full episode.

2. RA.1063 Andy Stott

   1 november 2026 · 1 uur 1 min

   Afspelen
   The Manchester artist marches back into the club and cranks up the subs. Lees meer

   “You don’t need to study music, you need to study sounds.” That was the advice Andy Stott’s piano teacher, Alison Skidmore, gave him as a teenager. Around 2010, stuck in a creative rut and tired of his dub techno sound, Stott slowed things down, started sampling field recordings and brought Skidmore in as his vocalist. Records like Luxury Problems and Faith In Strangers added a pop twist to his cavernous sound and made him a critics’ darling.

   His new album, Late Loop, out now, is his first in five years, is out this week. Skidmore returns alongside a new voice, Elaine Howley, and the aim, by his account, was to come away with songs rather than textures.

   You'll find the word "pop" attached to Stott's name a lot these days., but his RA Mix is about as far from pop as it gets: 12 new, unreleased tracks written fast at home. RA.1063 opens with an even weightier echo of “Numb,” and from there it’s industrial steppers all the way, chugging sub bass cut through with a sharp hi-hat, marching deeper into the dark.

   Somewhere between the grain of Demdike Stare and the bass pressure of The Bug, it’s almost seductive in how reductive it is. Skidmore once told him to study sounds. All these years later, Stott is still doing his homework.

   Find the Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1082
   @andystott-music

3. RA.1062 Loraine James

   25 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 3 min

   Afspelen
   A sonic diary from one of UK experimental music's brightest talents. Lees meer

   Loraine James doesn't like to sit still. She first made waves on Hyperdub, where 2019's For You and I and 2021's Reflection reimagined grime, IDM and dub with a mischievous touch. But calling her a club experimentalist has never fit the bill. The London-born artist has collaborated with everyone from Yaeji to TSVI, remixed Kelela and Tirzah, hosts an NTS show steeped in contemporary classical and turns out records at a staggering pace. She also makes some of the most evocative ambient around as Whatever the Weather.

   What holds it all together is irreverence and intimacy, like tuning into the silly but heartfelt voice notes you might send a new lover. And that energy runs through her RA Mix. It opens in wistful territory with her own Tirzah collaboration, before shifting into the spectral jazz of African-American Sound Recordings. A third of the way in, it moves to the darker corners of her USB, as Aoki Takamasa's glitchy minimal gives way to Burial at his hardest-hitting. From there, things stay weird: deconstructed freestyle rapping, vintage Flying Lotus, post-club trance via Arca and plenty of James's own music.

   Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1081
   @lorainejames

4. RA.1061 Andy Martin

   19 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 35 min

   Afspelen
   A 100 percent production mix from the dubwise don. Lees meer

   “You can find inspiration in everything, as insignificant as it seems,” Andy Martin told 15 Questions earlier this year. For the Mexican-Jamaican producer, that stretches from dub to Mexican literature, ancestral knowledge and science fiction, all fed into techno that sounds otherworldly but never forgets the floor.

   Dub is the skeleton of Martin’s music. Sometimes it’s explicit, as on his collaboration with Lee “Scratch” Perry. Sometimes it’s subtler, as on this year’s “Tierra de Nahuales” for Animalia, where a dub siren and decayed reverb pull proggy, tribal sci-fi techno into dub’s orbit. No wonder he’s a buy-on-sight producer for DJs like Kia, Priori and CCL, and as at home at Berghain and FOLD as at memòri and pe:rsona.

   Running just over 90 minutes, RA.1061 is an anthology made entirely of his own music. Track titles nod to Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo and Remedios Varo’s painting La creación de las aves, yet the mix is never as cerebral as that suggests. At a time when music is increasingly asked to justify itself in numbers, Martin counters: “Value exists precisely because it cannot be quantified.”

   Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1080
   @andy-martin

5. RA.1060 Ogazón

   12 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 28 min

   Afspelen
   The Berlin DJ, one of the brightest of her generation, makes a patient case for house and techno on vinyl. Lees meer

   We’ve all heard the phrase “DJ’s DJ.” Too often, it’s lazy shorthand for a technical skill so esoteric it’s lost on the dance floor. But Nathalie Ogazón Faber embodies the craft in its fullest sense, commanding respect from the regulars at the booth to the sound technician at the back.

   Known simply as Ogazón, she played her first gig in 2018 and made her Berghain debut in 2022. Since then she’s become the quintessential Panorama Bar DJ, a resident in spirit alongside ItaloJohnson, Steffi and her regular b2b partner, Ryan Elliott. Her affinity for techno is equally pronounced, and her mixing bridges both floors: patient and refined without ever feeling too polished.

   That patience defines her RA Mix. Forgoing obvious drops, she builds subtle, drawn-out peaks through delicate shifts like a weightier kick drum or an incoming hi-hat. Melody arrives as a pad here, a dubbed-out chord there. The connecting theme, she says, is emotion.

   Recorded entirely on vinyl, RA.1060 embraces imperfection. “In a world where everything is becoming increasingly polished and ‘perfect,’” she notes, “I think a little bit of grain and a few pops here and there can only be a good thing.” Ogazón is consistent, but don’t mistake that for regression. It’s what makes her a DJ’s DJ, in the truest sense.

   Find the Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1079
   @ogazon

6. RA.1059 nthng

   4 oktober 2026 · 56 min

   Afspelen
   Cinematic techno from the mysterious Dutch producer. Lees meer

   Some of the best techno is both beautiful and austere. On an old Robert Hood or Sandwell District track, the industrial clank of percussion gives way to bursts of melody where you can hear the ghosts singing inside the machines. It's this version of techno that the Dutch producer nthng has been honing since the mid-2010s, from his debut on Lobster Theremin's Mörk to records for Delsin.

   His take on techno, borrowing from trance, dub and ambient, has always hewed close to the edge of the dance floor, that space where dancers keep their eyes shut and get lost in the shadows.

   For RA.1059, he delivers an hour from the most visceral and cinematic end of his sound. The opening suite of four of his own tracks is nothing (pun intended) short of breathtaking: sky-searching IDM turns into chromatic techno, followed by a dubstep-referencing vocal track with a rolling break that hits with the weight of a guillotine, before he lets loose a slightly syncopated barnstormer. He never lets the drama and tension slip across the remaining 48 minutes, ending on his own piece of paranoid and skeletal drum & bass.

   Find the tracklist at ra.co/podcast/1078
   @nthngnthng

7. RA.1058 Tromac

   27 september 2026 · 1 uur 7 min

   Afspelen
   A showcase of East Coast club music, old and new, from a new Baltimore star. Lees meer

   Baltimore doesn't get the credit it deserves. Maryland's largest city gave the world Baltimore club, a blueprint for much of the East Coast's dance music—Jersey club and Philly club both trace their lineage back to it. The scene is alive and kicking, and Tromac, real name Miles Cowling, is at the heart of it.

   From Prince George's County, Cowling moved to Baltimore in 2019. In 2022 they launched Break A Leg, a party series and safe space for people to dance their pain away, and they've collaborated with RA cover star Zack Fox, Black Rave Culture and Cortisa Star.

   "You know how long I been waiting for this. I'm about to make a name for myself," begins RA.1058. From there, Cowling twists through contemporary East Coast club—OSSX, JIALING, JD. Reid, AceMo, DJ Swisha—plus honorary peers Bored Lord, Conducta and Jam City.

   Across 38 tracks in 66 minutes, it's high-tempo but not for the sake of it: sometimes coasting, sometimes jumping, sometimes letting it all out. About halfway through, a Tucker Carlson sample calls Baltimore one of the most dangerous cities around. Cowling's answer comes straight after, with the voice of CalvoMusic: "There are beautiful things here, don't come down to play the fuck around."

   Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1077
   @tromac
   @breakalegparty
   @hochiruns
   @3SIDEmusic

8. RA.1057 Marina Herlop

   20 september 2026 · 1 uur 1 min

   Afspelen
   An hour of ancient and alien sounds from the Catalan composer and PAN favourite. Lees meer

   Marina Herlop is at once from the future and from the past. The classically trained Catalan singer's voice opens a door onto an older world—a nymph out of a Romantic painting. Underneath, something deeply alien. "When you're writing a song… there's a moment of expulsion, like a squid spitting," she told Pitchfork.

   She didn't open a laptop until her third album, learning Ableton from scratch over a fortnight in her father's family home in the Aragon hills. That record, Pripyat, and its follow-up Nekkuja landed on PAN, placing her among the experimental queens like Eartheater and Jenny Hval—with a touch of Björk.

   Her RA Mix brings those influences to the surface: classical with a whiff of the strange (Holst's Rig Veda hymns, Sakamoto playing Ravel), music for worlds that don't exist (Ragnarok Online, Jujutsu Kaisen, Morricone) and a study in everything a voice can be made into.

   Barely any is club music. Assembled in Ableton—"I don't have access to a CDJ right now," she says—RA.1057 is a soundtrack for decompression. Asked which club shaped her most, she named one that isn't: El Pumarejo, the Barcelona space where she met the musicians still in her band.

   Find the Q&A and tracklist at ra.co/podcast/1076
   @marinaherlopofficial

9. RA.1056 Jasmín

   14 september 2026 · 2 uur 38 min

   Afspelen
   One of the Netherlands' sharpest selectors turns in over two hours of smoke-thick techno and cathartic bass weight. Lees meer

   "Genre-defying" has trailed Jasmín Hoek, best known as Jasmín, for years. It isn't wrong—listen to the Dutch-Argentinian artist's mixes and you'll hear anything from Rrose and Blawan to Ricardo Villalobos and DJ Koze. But it misses a better question: what holds it all together?

   "For every set I play, I think of the colours I want to represent," Hoek explains in her Q&A. For RA.1056, she channels warm, earthy colours; you'll see it running through the tracklist, from "Burning Blood" and "Eruption" to "Chamas E Fumaça."

   The other constant is percussion over melody. Half Argentinian, Hoek has spoken about her preference for rhythm, and it gives her work a physicality you can almost walk into. It's there from the first minute: Pinch and Shackleton's "Burning Blood," dark and twisted and sprawling. But Hoek is a techno head too, with plenty that wouldn't feel out of place at Berghain: Cari Lekebusch, Rene Wise, Rrose.

   It's a cliché that the best DJs are dancers first, but Hoek embodies it, having worked at De School and, more recently, programming with Nachtparlement. Last year's Bite The Hand That Feeds You arrived as Hessle Audio's 50th release; this year she lands on fabric Originals. Whatever floor she graces next, she'll arrive with a vision that will take you by the hand, and pull you all the way in.

   Find the Q&A and tracklist at ra.co/podcast/1075
   @Jasminhoek
   @fabric
   @hessleaudio

10. RA.1055 Grace Dahl

    6 september 2026 · 1 uur 3 min

    Afspelen
    Supersized techno, from the Vault Sessions darling. Lees meer

    If you're part of the post-2020 cohort of techno heads, odds are you've heard of Grace Dahl. The Amsterdam native has become ubiquitous the past few years, via her DJing, productions and her label, Serial Disc Touchers. Her techno is energetic, embracing and big without sacrificing complexity or detail. This wasn't overnight, though: born in Hungary to seasoned ravers, Dahl started playing out at 18 and landed a residency at Vault Sessions and regular Berghain appearances soon after. Serial Disc Touchers, Vol. 1, a collaborative EP with Alec Dienarr, moves from ropey tech house to peaktime anthems and after hours acid, held together by her balance of floor functionality and emotional finesse.

    Dahl brings the same MO to her RA Mix. Starting with a melancholic selection of dubbed-out techno, she waits until the 20-minute mark to get things funky. From there, RA.1055 is all party: bleep techno ready for a carnival, outrageous 303 work and a hint of vintage UK rave, with a tracklist spanning VNTM and Villa to Luke Slater, Underworld and Ian Axide. Big-room techno done right—careful and considerate in selection but ready to blast your boots off.

    Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1074
    @gracedahl
    @vault-sessions-collective

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