Podcast
Ransom Note
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Ransom Note is an online music, arts and culture magazine. We provide a home for readers and writers with boundless enthusiasm, esoteric knowledge, fierce opinions and impeccable taste.
With our core team immersed in all aspects of dance music, we publish news, articles, and interviews covering the greatest in innovative, underground culture from across the globe. We offer regular, exclusive music and mixtapes from our favourite artists, and publish features shining a light on everything from the freshest new artists to the untold tales from rave history.
Alongside this we offer musings on film, books, life, and art, generating some context and controversy as an antidote to the reheated PR that clogs up the internet. Our office is fuelled by Tunnock’s Bars, cat memes, hangovers and a ridiculous, never ending love for our culture.
We're always interested in getting new writers on board – feel free to get in touch if you’ve got a story to tell.
With love until the grave.
37episodes
Episodes
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Manami: The Ransom Note Mix
6d ago01:23:30Tap to summarizeManami is firing on all cylinders. If you’ve spent any time on a UK dancefloor over the last decade, you’ve likely crossed paths with her. Born in Japan and raised on Bristol’s foundational dub, house and bass scenes, she’s built a fierce reputation for holding down a room with unmatched energy and a distinct sense of community. From early days raving at Livity Sound, Futureboogie, Timedance and Deep Medi to co-founding Bristol's Better Days parties, her musical DNA has always balanced the deep and the progressive. Now, she’s channelling that background into a distinct sonic realignment. Her latest productions and fresh live set lean heavily into sub-heavy 140, breakbeat, jungle and footwork, all tied together with those familiar progressive sensibilities. Beyond the booth, Manami is mentoring FLINTA talent with Saffron and connecting East and South East Asian creatives through the East & Most initiative. With appearances spanning from Berlin’s Atonal to unforgettable sets at UNFOLD, DGTL, Junction 2 and Boiler Room, she remains one of the UK's most reliable, anything-goes selectors. We locked her in for a mix. Check it out now.
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Hercules and Love Affair: The Ransom Note Mix
2w ago01:00:25Tap to summarizeHercules and Love Affair is an electronic music project created in 2004 by DJ, producer and songwriter Andy Butler. Originally formed in New York City, the act became known for blending classic disco, Chicago house, techno and synth-pop into emotionally charged dance music with an art-pop sensibility. Rather than functioning as a traditional band, Hercules and Love Affair operates as a rotating collective of vocalists, musicians and collaborators, with Butler remaining the project’s central creative force. The project remains at the forefront of queer dance music culture in the UK and beyond and in our own opinion, remains pivotal for the fact that there has been no bowing or amenity towards fads or trends. They returned at the tail end of 2025, now as we approach summer a new remix package has been announced which includes contributions from the likes of Ciel, Luke Solomon and Mystery Affair. However, as mentioned above, their connection to the underground and origins of the sound has afforded them the rare privilege of a remix from none other than Larry Heard under the Mr Fingers alias. In celebration of this, here is a rare mix from Hercules and Love Affair, a homage to house music and the direction of travel as we proceed.
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PREMIERE: James Allison 'Dub In Cairo'
2w ago00:06:43Tap to summarizeCult classic given the Allison magic… There was a Young Fellow called James Allison, who said, “All this dancing has something quite wrong with it! I’ll edit three classics and turn them about, And make all the rockers get up and go out!” So he rummaged through cult cuts and album-shelf things, and polished them up till they jangled like strings, Said Ivan Smagghe. “Goodness!” said Sean Johnston, “My word!” Said Chris Stoker, “Remarkable!” James Holroyd concurred. “Make Dance Rock Again!” cried the Fellow with glee, “It’s Series the First but there’s more, you shall see!” And the dancefloor said “Blimey!” and the rock crowd said “Right!” And everyone edited long into the night. Make Dance Rock Again 001 is the first instalment in an ongoing series from James Allison, and it arrives as a statement of intent. The EP finds Allison doing what only the most quietly confident selectors pull off: taking three records – cult classics and possibly overlooked album cuts alike – and editing them into something that reveals exactly who he is when the dancefloor isn’t looking. A clear, unguarded window into a taste that exists well outside Allison’s dance music world, and the results are, as billed, certified head turners. Early support from Ivan Smagghe, Sean Johnston, James Holroyd and the late Chris Stoker (Not An Animal) suggests the series has arrived fully formed. A strong opening missive – and the first entry in something worth watching closely. Buy Here: https://jamesallison-mdra.bandcamp.com/album/make-dance-rock-again-vol-1
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PREMIERE: Bikini Body - Georgie Weaver (Dont Try and Touch Me Mix) [Paradise Palms]
2w ago00:04:26Tap to summarizeYour favourite DJ’s favourite punk band are back, and they’ve brought the sweat with them. There was a Young Band from the Paradise Palms, Who played with such fury it rattled your arms, They grooved like the ESG, bit like The Slits, And drove Windmill Brixton completely to bits! “O come to our Party!” cried Bikini Body, “It’s perfectly sweaty and pleasantly shoddy! The bassline is punching, the drumming is tight, And everyone’s dancing till quarter to light!” So they packed up the Palms and they played BBC, And KEXP and Radio 6 and NTS and free, And the dancefloor said “Goodness!” and the basement said “More!” And nobody quite knew what a party was for. Bikini Body return with the Weirdest Party EP, their first release on Paradise Palms Records following two records on Optimo Music – a pairing that did a lot to define both their trajectory and their restless, hybrid sound. This new set pushes further into the territory they’ve made their own: the charged, uneasy space where dancefloor pressure and punk confrontation refuse to separate. Percussive, physical and wired with attitude, the tracks draw a lineage that runs from ESG and Liquid Liquid through Bush Tetras, The Slits and X-Ray Spex, with the remixes opening things out for club systems without sanding off a single rough edge. It’s music that works equally hard in a sweaty basement and on a packed dancefloor – which, given a 13-date UK co-headline tour ending in a sold-out London show, a packed Windmill Brixton headline, and airplay across BBC Radio 1, 6 Music, KEXP and NTS, appears to be exactly where people are putting it. Weirdest Party EP is out on Paradise Palms Records on 22nd May 2026. Catch them live on our stage at Another Thought on 13th June.
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PREMIERE: Patricia Wolf - Abiotic Factors [Music To Watch Seeds Grow By]
May 200:06:51Tap to summarizeWe’re premiering the video for ‘Abiotic Factors’ – Patricia Wolf’s opening dispatch from Gothic, Colorado and the invisible forces that determine whether anything grows at all… Tia and Wil’s Music To Watch Seeds Grow By series – the ambient/new-age/planty cassette label has in nine editions, tried to make a compelling case that the best way to understand ambient is to get your hands in some soil and think about it properly. Each artist chooses a plant that inspires their music and can be sown in the month of the release. Simple. Seasonal. You may have noticed it already. For the ninth edition – the third of Season Two – they’ve brought in Portland, Oregon-based musician and field recordist Patricia Wolf, whose album Yarrow takes its name from Achillea millefolium, a flowering plant whose broad geographic range spans North America and Eurasia, which also happens to make it the perfect conceptual thread to connect Portland (where the music was written and recorded) to London (where the cassette was pressed and will land through your letterbox alongside a packet of yarrow seeds and a fact card about the plant). A transatlantic weed of the most beautiful kind. Wolf is one of the most interesting people quietly operating at the edges of sound art. Her recent arc has taken her from grief (I’ll Look For You In Others, 2022) to a kind of luminous rebirth (See-Through, 2022), then to birds – literal birds, in Iceland, for a documentary score (Hrafnamynd, 2025) – and now, with this album, to plants. Specifically, to the invisible forces that determine whether plants live or die at all. Yarrow was created in response to Wolf’s artist residency at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, Colorado, as part of the Art-Science Exchange Project in the summer of 2024. She worked closely with ecologists Dr Paul CaraDonna, Dr Amy Iler, Dr Jane Ogilvie, Dr Nickolas Waser, Dr Mary Price, and Dr Will Petry, spending weeks embedded in long-term research on plants, pollinators, and their interactions as the climate changes. This is not, in other words, an ambient album about plants in the vague, pastoral sense. It’s an album about plants in the way a botanist might describe them: as dynamic organisms in constant, often invisible negotiation with their environment. Which brings us to ‘Abiotic Factors’, the album’s opening track and the subject of today’s premiere. Abiotic factors – for those of us who skipped that particular biology lesson – are the non-living environmental conditions that determine whether an organism can exist at all: light availability, temperature, rainfall, wind, soil composition. They are the infrastructure beneath the visible world, the silent set of forces that a plant cannot choose but must simply work with, adapt to, or perish. As a concept for an opening track, it’s contemplative and a perfect orientation into the album… which you’ll all hear in its entirety soon little seedlings. The video was shot closer to home – in Wolf’s Portland neighbourhood - through the lens of Edward Pack Davee, the filmmaker behind the Hrafnamynd documentary Wolf scored last year. Watch here: https://www.theransomnote.com/art-culture/video-premiere-patricia-wolf-abiotic-factors/
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Safiye: The 'Shine A Light On' Mix
Apr 2801:47:27Tap to summarizeSafiye has been quietly doing the work. And we mean that in every sense. Anyone who's crossed paths with her at Love International - or anywhere else, for that matter - will know there's a version of Safiye most people never fully clock. The one making sure everything runs smoothly, checking in on people, holding the energy of a room without ever needing to shout about it. Calm, kind, and completely unflappable in the way that only someone truly on top of things can afford to be. Years spent on dancefloors across the globe and through a bi-weekly show on SWU.FM have sharpened her instinct for the room, one that's taken her from Bristol's underground to the fields of Glastonbury and to the aforementioned Love International - last few tix left for that those at the back. Since 2024, she has been part of Bristol's disco powerhouse Paradisco, a permanent fixture on dancefloors in the city and beyond. As she puts it herself, it's not just showing up to a gig and pressing play - the coordination, the planning, the endless behind-the-scenes effort that nobody really sees. That's the work. And she does it with the same ease she brings to everything else. The through line in all of it is a sound that's slippery by design. House, electro, disco and acid all chosen carefully, sequenced with intention. Let’s have a chat and get it on, shall we? https://www.theransomnote.com/music/mixes/safiye-the-shine-a-light-on-mix/
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Seeds Mix #10: Salamanda's A Cradle for Basil
Apr 1401:00:44Tap to summarize“Everyone needs a moment of silence every once in a while,” Basil seems to know this, too. Salamanda create a bed for Basil’s germination. Watching something small grow in your kitchen makes you pay close attention. The Seoul-based duo Salamanda and the next artist stepping up for Seeds understand this. Uman (Sala) and Yejin (Manda) spent a day watching a single basil plant on a windowsill, noticing how the light shifted across its leaves, water gathered at its roots, and time slipped by. What started as a simple observation turned into a meditation on the inner life of a plant and what it means to really listen to something living. Sala(Uman)_s salad Basil droops in the cold, grows too fast in the heat, and can wilt from too much attention; it needs a moment, too. Salamanda noticed that this silence is a pause for space, where the real growth happens. For them, music fills that space… Manda talks about understanding her own feelings by looking at her plants. When she feels down, the plants seem to react. They reflect something back: being present, paying attention, and giving and receiving care. This mix comes from that kind of language, asking you to keep coming back to care for the same small plant. If basil could think, what would it think of you? Get your headphones on. Listen to the way a plant listens to light… https://soundcloud.com/8salamanda8
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Lay Llamas - The Ransom Note Mix
Apr 1001:00:45Tap to summarizeA longstanding, driving force within the Italian underground and the wider world of contemporary psychedelic music, Lay Llamas celebrates the release of the project's new album 'Time, Islands and Thresholds' with a mesmerizing mix for our main series. Nicola Giunta has been leading the psych brigade under the Lay Llamas banner for well over a decade. Formed in 2012, the project has since released an entrancing, ever-evolving body of work across indispensable labels including Rocket Recordings and Black Sweat Records, collaborating with the likes of Goat, Clinic, Damo Suzuki (Can), and Mark Stewart (The Pop Group) along the way. With new album ‘Time, Islands and Thresholds‘, Lay Llamas heads out on a spellbinding, synapse-fried voyage that evokes hallucinatory visions in mysterious, exotic lands. Across ten tracks, hypnagogic psychedelia is masterfully laced with cosmic dub, space rock, and the kind of music you might hear on records by Eden Ahbez and Martin Denny. Describing the imagery and existential trajectory that underpins the record, Giunta references “surfers on acid, mysterious rites on deserted islands, worshippers of solar deities, night flights, animal skins, will-o’-the-wisps on hilltops, liminal spaces, passages into the underworld, psychic inner journeys; life, death and rebirth.” ‘Time, Islands and Thresholds‘ then, is a record of heady, retrofuturist iconography and into-the-void introspection. Drawing parallels with Spacemen 3, Peaking Lights and Sun Araw, it’s an album that nevertheless finds Lay Llamas plotting the project’s own psychotropic course. The album finale ‘I Was Blind (Now It’s Over)‘ is also one of the most beautifully strung out songs we’ve heard this year. To accompany the release of the album, Giunta has put together a suitably potent mix of hypnotic drum trances, heavyweight dub, snarling noir-punk and rarefied psych to liven up, expand and soothe your soul. Settle in for a special one. Interview: https://www.theransomnote.com/music/lay-llamas-the-ransom-note-mix/ Tracklist 1 - Cheval Fou - La fin de la vie, le début de la survivance 2 - Cloud Management, Vivien Goldman - Judge Judge 3 - The Serfs - Cold Hand In Mine 4 - Laika - Spooky Rhodes 5 - Geologist - Oracle Road 6 - Death and Vanilla - Intro 7 - Orange Car Crash - Straight Star 8 - Coma World - Western 9 - Des Demonas - There Are No Vampires in Africa 10 - Dave Harrington (ft. Chris Forsyth - Ryan Jewell - Spencer Zahn) - REDUX Dub 8 11 - Deradoorian - Weed Jam 12 - Montel Palmer - Mermaid Wolf Whistle
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PREMIERE: THE SHAPE OF DANCE TO COME - What Is Your Definition [Calypso Records]
Apr 900:04:42Tap to summarizeWonky organic grooves from ALF CHAMPION and MDHNTR via Calypso records new compilation There once was a Shape who could dance, With pockets of electronica trance, It wobbled its form through the Definition, And questioned each note and condition, While singing quite badly about circumstance. “What is,” asked the Shape, “this peculiar sound? That bounces and bobs all around and around? Is it liquid or solid or something between? The strangest device I have ever seen!” Said a very confused polka-dotted hound. The Definition replied with a riddled refrain: “I am what you hear when you listen again, A thing that is not, yet somehow it is, A shape-shifting, drift-curious quiz, That dances through corridors, valleys, and rain.” And they walttzed through the Calypso till dawn broke its spell, Those two nonsensical friends, who got on quite well, For a Shape needs Definition as much as it’s true, That Definition needs Shape to be something brand new, And that, my dear reader, concludes this strange tale to tell. “What Is Your Definition” sits in that liminal space between organic groove and electronic. It’s the sound of something taking shape… which leads rather nicely onto Calypso Vol. II, a nine-year endeavour where Iñigo Vontier and Thomass Jackson assemble 16 voices across the spectrum of the experimental electronic Press play and find out what you’re listening to. Or better yet: ask what your own voice is. @calypsorecs @alf_champion @mdhntr000
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Daichi: The 'Shine A Light On' Mix
Apr 701:04:51Tap to summarizeFrom the coastline to the dance-floor. Daichi's ear was formed early. Weekends spent at Oppa-La in Enoshima absorbing whatever the room had to offer, left a mark that still runs through everything he does. From there the path naturally progressed, co-founding Vinyl Youth, a collective whose energy has carried through Korea and onto the stage at Rainbow Disco Club. His productions tell a similar story. Edits and originals landing on MM Discos, Crue-L and Not an Animal, each release finding ears far beyond Japan. This is music with a sense of place. Read more: https://www.theransomnote.com/music/mixes/daichi-the-shine-a-light-on-mix/
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