Podcast
RA Podcast
Hosted by Resident Advisor · EN
Front left since 2001.
32episodes
Episodes
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RA.1041 Chlär
5d ago01:10:08Tap to summarizeEntirely unreleased, undeniably funky techno. Charles Accarisi, AKA Chlär, treats techno like a science. From his earliest days as an audio engineer, the Lisbon-via-Switzerland artist has approached techno with the precision of a seasoned experimentalist, dissecting our love of listening to kick drums in dark, sweaty clubs down to its very bones. Before launching his label, Primal Instinct, in 2023, he dug deep, building its foundation on neuroscience studies exploring syncopation and bass frequencies. Yet, for all its academic rigor, Accarisi's music remains incredibly funky. You can hear this endless pursuit of groove in his DJ sets. His productions flit across the techno continuum with similar versatility. One minute, as half of Funk Assault, he's flipping a Beastie Boys vocal into a 140-BPM weapon; the next, he aims straight for the head, trading peak-time bacchanalia for the haunted hypnotism of the afterhours. RA 1041 is all of this and more. Composed entirely of unreleased tracks, it delivers 70 minutes of heads-down techno in its purest form. It's heavy and dark, for sure, but undeniably swung, seamlessly bridging dub techno and sweat-inducing hardgroove throwbacks. This is contemporary techno synthesized by a master chemist. Read the Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1060 @chlaer @primalinstinctrecords
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RA.1040 Clementaum
2w ago01:02:19Tap to summarizeThe São Paulo-based artist tears through baile funk, ballroom, Latin club and techno in a turbo-charged showcase of global club music's cutting edge. Take one look at Clementaum behind the decks and she seems less like a DJ than a force of nature. Dressed to the nines and usually keeping time with a fan, she mixes impossibly chaotic drum patterns that ricochet from baile funk to ballroom, Baltimore club to kuduro. Her sets are packed with her own productions—deliciously chaotic collisions of two decades of Latin American club music, shaken hard with EDM and techno. Raised in Curitiba, Clementaum entered nightlife as a hostess before stepping behind the decks and beginning to produce in 2018. A Rinse FM residency followed in 2023, her first European tour in 2024 and now, fresh off her debut Oceania run, she has her sights set on the rest of the globe. RA.1040 is a turbo-charged introduction to Clementaum's sonic world. Loaded with unreleased tracks from herself as well as other rising figures in the Brazilian underground, it captures the bleeding edge of global club music: ecstatic horn lines, flubber-bounce kick drums, freewheeling vocal samples, stadium-sized breakdowns, video game arpeggios and basslines that seem to rearrange space-time itself. It's possible you haven't heard a Clementaum set before, but it's impossible to forget one when you have. Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1059 @clementaum
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EX.798 Suzanne Ciani
2w ago00:29:53Tap to summarizeThe pioneering artist talks philosophy, Berghain and touring on the eve of her 80th birthday. Suzanne Ciani is a synth music legend. After establishing herself as one of the first virtuosos of Don Buchla's modular system in the 1960s, she went on to earn five Grammy nominations, score a Hollywood film and found her own sound design company—creating iconic commercial soundtracks for Coca-Cola, AT&T and Atari. In this RA Exchange recorded live at IMS Ibiza, Ciani traces her remarkable path to success. She breaks down the working philosophy that got her there: from walking away from opportunities that didn't align with her vision, to carving out her own lane in a male-dominated industry that refused to make room for her. Now, just weeks away from turning 80, she discusses life on the road, collaborating with a new generation of electronic musicians and her first impressions of Berghain. Listen to the episode in full.
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RA.1039 K Wata
3w ago01:24:09Tap to summarizeSleek, sensual bass science from the NYC SLINK boss, sketching a new blueprint for dub in the 2020s. Kenzo Perron, AKA K Wata, uses bass the way a poet uses punctuation. Sub weight, subtle wobbles and snaking rhythms become commas, dashes and periods—tiny gestures that shape movement, tension and release. Perron's sound sits somewhere between the cavernous minimalism of Rhythm & Sound and the wiry precision of Livity Sound, pulling equally from sound system culture, contemporary minimalism and East Coast club music. His breakthrough 2021 EP, What Do U Wan, sounds like the photo negatives of a Fade to Mind record redesigned for sunrise at Sustain-Release (not to mention his work with Daytimers affiliate Enayet as E-Wata). More broadly, Perron belongs to a a growing American underground reshaping dub techno and bass music in adventurous ways. What sets his music apart, however, is the way it balances delicacy with kineticism and, as his RA Mix makes clear, a touch of sexiness and intimacy too. RA.1039 draws from that very sonic palette. RA.1039 is mainly composed of contemporary dub tracks released in the past decade (with a few choice exceptions). One minute we're wigging out to the krautrock-meets-Black Ark Studio of Eiger Drums Propaganda, the next we're slinking to the hi-fi club of Significant Other. In Perron's hand they melt into a molten liquid of sexy, sleek, bass science. Find the tracklist and read the Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1058 @kwatakwata
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EX.797 Ed O'Brien
3w ago01:01:30Tap to summarizeThe Radiohead guitarist talks about finding spirituality, life inside one of the most mythologised (and occasionally polarising) bands of the last 40 years, and his second solo album, Blue Morpho. Ed O'Brien has been a guitarist in Radiohead since the band formed at Abingdon School in the mid '80s, playing a supporting role across a catalogue largely written by Thom Yorke. He comes from a guitar tradition that runs through Johnny Marr, John McGeoch and Will Sergeant—players who serve the music rather than themselves. His second solo record, Blue Morpho, is his most fully realised statement away from the band. The themes running through it are spiritual, in the broadest sense. With anything related to group dynamics or current affairs averted by request, in this RA Exchange, O'Brien speaks with RA’s Editor Gabe Szatan about a long period of depression during lockdown, the meditation practice that pulled him through it and his deepening interest in devotional music and sound as a physical force, which has fed his subsequent songwriting. He also discusses the wider arc of a life in music: his years at Parlophone, the early Radiohead webcasts, the move from OK Computer to Kid A and what it felt like to climb back on stage with the band last year. Blue Morpho is out May 22 on Transgressive Records. Listen to the episode in full.
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RA.1038 The Trip
4w ago01:28:38Tap to summarize90 minutes of blissful, sun-soaked house from the essential UK producer duo. For a certain type of DJ, a record from The Trip is a buy-on-sight proposition. Even if the name is new, you’ve likely heard their tracks in sets from Job Jobse, Shanti Celeste or Avalon Emerson. With a catalogue full of records equally at home at Pitch Music & Arts or fabric Room 2, Oliver Hiam and Max van Dijk have locked into a particular sweet spot: big, emotional dance music with enough drive to snap a festival crowd into focus, while still carrying the nuance and emotional pull of the best ’90s club records. The key to this is decidedly old-fashion: clocking hours on the dance floor. Long before they became a hot-shot producer duo, Hiam and van Dijk were promoters first. For more than a decade, they hosted parties at Corsica Studios under the Tessellate banner, bringing artists like DJ Sprinkles, Mr. Ties and Octo Octa to London. Think of RA.1038 as a marker for the start of summer: packed with bongo drums, piano breakdowns, and the occasional surprise (at one point, you might even hear what sounds like a dolphin sample). It hits that sweet spot for outdoor dancing: light, playful and just euphoric enough. As they note in their Q&A, it traces a line through the deeper corners of their taste, ducking pure peak-time pressure to show off a real feel for tension and release—honed over years of reading the floor from both sides of the booth. Read the Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1057 @tessellatelondon
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RA.1037 Lola Haro
May 301:19:21Tap to summarizeThe emergent star of the Belgian underground delivers 80 minutes of spectral techno, electro and leftfield obscurities. Lola Haro has clubbing in her DNA. The Brussels-based DJ grew up around electronic music, with parents who were regulars at Antwerp’s Café d’Anvers and a childhood shaped by record stores and a household soundtracked by Villalobos mixes. Since emerging in the late 2010s, she’s become a key figure in the Belgian underground, moving within a loose network of “diggers” exploring the deeper corners of electro, techno and house. That sensibility comes through clearly on RA.1037, where Haro drifts through spectral techno, electro and leftfield club obscurities. The mix unfolds like a fever dream: spacious grooves give way to uneasy bass pressure and jagged, alien rhythms, before slipping back into murky, immersive flow. Rather than genre, mood binds the set—slow, creeping tension and a sense of something always on the verge of collapse. Drawing on a recent warehouse set in Melbourne, it’s a study in subtle control, with blends so seamless the seams all but disappear. In the final stretch, arpeggios spill over like acid rain, dissolving any sense of solid ground. Find the Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1056 @lola-haro
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RA.1036 Tony Humphries
Apr 2601:02:06Tap to summarizeA rare snapshot of house music's early days, captured through an unheard 1986 broadcast from the East Coast pioneer. For Humphries' long overdue debut on the RA Mix series, we publish an original, unedited radio recording from 1986, during Humphries' glorious reign over KISS FM's airwaves at the right hand of Shep Pettibone. Drawn from Humphries' own archives, the Running Back-sanctioned release captures the breadth of his reach at a time when he was breaking records week in, week out—bridging New Jersey talent, European imports and the emerging Chicago sound in a single sweep. Every Friday and Saturday night, for over a decade, Tony Humphries checked in to Kiss FM, bringing the club to the airwaves. Alongside a residency at New Jersey's answer to Paradise Garage, Club Zanzibar, Humphries helped define the sound of garage house on the New York–New Jersey axis. Like Larry Levan, you simply can’t think of the city’s scene without him. The hour-long mix shivers with spectral vocals and solar-plexus grooves alike, a document of Humphries knack for acting as a conduit for various funk-forward tributaries the world over. A mastermix, indeed. Find the Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1055 @tony-humphries
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RA.1035 RHR
Apr 1901:04:18Tap to summarizeThe star of São Paulo chops up 60 minutes of futuristic, global club sounds. It's an oft-heard cliché to describe an artist as truly singular. But with Roniere Santos, AKA RHR, it couldn't be more true. Part of a generation of Brazilian and Latin American artists reshaping club music, Santos and his peers have propelled it to unprecedented global reach. His sets—fearsome, bass-driven and unbound by BPM—have made him essential at some of the world's most forward-thinking clubs and festivals, from Horst to Berghain to Gop Tun. Behind the decks, his radical approach is both audible and felt through the body, driven by uncanny beatmatching and fluid harmonic mixing. Sonically, he pairs a knowledge of sound design with restless curiosity about music spanning continents and subcultures—evident in this recording, where Brazilian rap meets maqam-inspired melodies and breakbeat sections blend with deconstructed baile funk loops. And while his reach is now global, Santos remains inseparable from São Paulo. It's where he found his footing: from his first residency at Tantša, to belonging at Mamba Negra, to the foundations of an international career. For RA.1035, RHR crosses all the ground you might imagine—trance pads, dreamy pan flutes, post-dubstep, baile funk—with a menacing and seductive energy, a sense of discovery lurking behind every track. Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1054 @rhrmusiq
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EX.795 Avalon Emerson
Apr 1500:44:58Tap to summarizeThe musical polymath talks creative left turns, the collapse of music media and her new album as Avalon & the Charm, Written into Changes. A decade after her first feature appearance in Resident Advisor, Avalon Emerson returns for a long-form chat about the arc of her career and her surprising left turn towards indie pop. After leaving a successful career in coding in the early 2010s, the American DJ and producer became, seemingly overnight, a headline act touring the world's best clubs. By 2016, she was one of the most vital voices in underground dance music: a regular at Panorama Bar, a master of art of the eight-hour set and an artist releasing tracks that defined an era of emotive techno. Recently, Emerson has surprised fans and critics by making yet another unexpected pivot as Avalon & the Charm. After debuting the dream pop band in 2023, she's back with the second album, Written into Changes, leaning even further into songwriting, live instrumentation and collaborations across the music spectrum. In this candid conversation, she unpacks the new release—the vulnerability of lyrics exploring regret, setbacks and love lost—alongside the financial realities of performing as a live act. She also reflects on the leap of faith it takes to change course in public, her move from Berlin to a more balanced life in upstate New York and the "meat grinder" of the modern music industry, including the state of music journalism today. Listen to the episode in full.
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