RA Exchange

"We always put minorities to the front." The Mala Junta cofounder and affiliate talk about prioritising femme queer ravers, the value of local party crews and not taking themselves too seriously. Friends and colleagues Hyperaktivist and Yazzus share one important value: putting marginalised folks to the front. The Venezuelan and Ghana-via-London artists, respectively, met in Berlin not long after Yazzus went to the Berlin-based Mala Junta party, a collective co-founded by Hyperaktivist, DJ Tool and door selector Nyaam Hassany. Yazzus was asked to be a party resident and has collaborated with the crew extensively, playing their shows and helping curate lineups ever since. In this RA Exchange with Berlin DJ and journalist Juba, the two talk about their shared passion for better representation on party lineups and what authentic diversity means in a climate that often privileges checking boxes and meeting quotas. They also talk about their solo endeavours, their trajectories into dance music and their shared passion for nurturing the growth of homegrown parties and scenes. Amid Berlin's rising prices (and competition), they reflect that the ideals of collaboration and connection remain stronger than ever before. Listen to the conversation in full.

"I discovered how to build sound systems at our dairy farm." The DJ talks about growing up in rural Australia, starting her own label and more in this Playing Favourites live from Pitch Music & Arts. On this week's Exchange, we reintroduce our flagship live format, Playing Favourites, where artists discuss the songs that shaped their taste in music. Today's episode features CC:DISCO! at Pitch Festival in Australia. As the artist's name suggests, her style fuses disco with French touch, synth-driven electro and funk; she's collaborated with artists like Jennifer Loveless and released her first EP with Erol Alkan on his label Phantasy Sound, and last year she launched her own imprint, Miami Daddy. In this interview, CC:DISCO! plays songs that were formative in her career development and reflects on growing up outside of big cities. Born and raised on a dairy farm in rural Victoria, FM radio became her cultural lifeline and her first introduction to dance music. The artist also talks about working with indigenous promoters from beyond Sydney (Eora) and Melbourne (Naarm), the music that defines Australia today and the protest songs that have helped serve as the backdrop for the First Nations fight for representation and sociopolitical change. Listen to the episode in full.

"It's a pure form of love." The hardcore artist talks about collecting ephemera from rave zines, working in high fashion and his undying love for the gabber community. Alberto Guerrini, better known as Gabber Eleganza, has made a name for himself as a hardcore and gabber DJ, as well as a fervid documenter of the culture that surrounds it. Growing up in Italy, he started going to raves at a club called Number One Hardcore before eventually traveling to the Netherlands with his parents' blessing and starting to DJ himself. Guerrini's love of hardcore spilled over into a Tumblr blog he started in 2011, a project that aggregated the rave zines, photos and stories he collected from his time spent in the gabber community. The goal of the project, he says in this interview, was to build up anthropological dialogues on the "sonic landscape and aesthetic of the hardcore continuum." The online compendium contains amazing pieces of hardcore ephemera: clippings of Soviet era rave zines, letters ex-ravers sent to the hardcore community from jail and Guerrini's own appendices providing context around the global subculture. Much of this archival work made its way into a book that Guerrini published with artists Ewen Spencer Mark Leckey called Hardcore Soul, a photography collection that traces the similarities and relationships between hardcore and the UK's Northern Soul movement. He discusses this and more—including his own label, Never Sleep, and his work with the fashion industry and art worlds—in this conversation with Chloe Lula. Listen to the episode in full.

"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.

"You could feel the ground shifting beneath you." The long time BBC Radio host talks about her party, All Queens, her love for SHERELLE and music as a force for good. Resident Advisor continues its celebration of Women's History Month (and International Women's Day) with a special conversation with Mary Anne Hobbs. The long time BBC Radio presenter has been a diehard documenter of music culture and a radio fanatic ever since she was a young girl. As she recounts in this episode, the transistor she kept in secret while growing up became her getaway to another universe, a beacon of hope that she listened to every night under the covers at home. In 1996, she became a host at BBC Radio 1. It was a time when there were few women involved in the music industry in general, and few people at all championing leftfield electronic music. Hobbs famously started the Breezeblock show and championed dubstep and grime, pushing new artists whose work she admired and helping usher them into the limelight. Today Hobbs' iconic voice is still hosting the radio every day—this time at Radio 6. She's leading an exciting project called All Queens, a platform that started as a radio show for women's music that has quickly turned into a touring club night at fabric run by and starring women, from the sound engineers to the bouncers and headliners of the night. Hobbs discusses the platform and is joined by close friend SHERELLE, who dissects some of the nuances in representation the scene fails to overlook when it discusses gender in nightlife. The pair recently performed sets together at the BBC Radio 6 Music Festival. Listen to the episode in full. This episode was recorded at Recorded at Pirate Studios – Recording, Rehearsal, DJ, Podcast and Dance studios spread across New York, London, Berlin, Los Angeles and beyond. For more information, visit pirate.com.

"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.

"The road is incredible but has a lot of pitfalls." The fabric resident discusses striking the balance between DJing and production, the challenges of a life on tour and choosing to stick out. Daniel Avery wasn't expecting to make it big. Born in the seaside town of Bournemouth, his early musical diet consisted of shoegaze, post-punk, electroclash and indie rock; he was a die hard fan in attendance at every local live show. But when he moved to London, he was introduced to dance music and became immersed in nightlife, meeting artists like Erol Alkan and Andrew Weatherall who were using the sounds of guitar bands with techno and electronic music for the dance floor. Soon Daniel was working out of a studio next to Weatherall's—who became his longtime mentor—and started warming up the dance floor at fabric on a regular basis. His debut album, Drone Logic, was released to critical acclaim in 2013, and has been followed by six more full-lengths and a number of EPs and singles since. In this episode of the RA Exchange, Avery reflects on the shock of being catapulted into the limelight after Drone Logic's unexpected success, and the ongoing struggle he's contended with as he's taken on a full-time touring schedule as a DJ. He also touches on his eclectic range of influences and how he's integrated them in his forthcoming album and newly revitalised fabric party series, Divided Love, which launches on March 2. Listen to the episode in full.

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.

In this re-run from 2020, the late DJ and radio host reflects on memories from BBC Radio 1, disrupting the patriarchy and the keys to success in broadcasting. Annie Nightingale, who died last week at the age of 83, was the first women radio presenter on BBC Radio 1-and the longest serving broadcaster in the station's history. She became known for championing new, underground music and led the movement for women to become DJs and broadcasters, becoming a necessarily disruptive force across radio and live music. Fans of Nightingale's knew her as the Queen of Breaks, given her strong affinity for the sound. But she also introduced listeners to prog rock, punk, indie and dance music, and was unfeignedly passionate about them all. While she had no technical know-how when she started at the BBC, that didn't stop her. Despite her parents' request to "have something to fall back on," she dove head first into broadcasting, establishing herself quickly and even braving listeners' expectations by booking acts who weren't considered trendy or mainstream at the time. In this archival conversation with Martha Pazienti Caidan—who worked closely with Nightingale at BBC Radio 1—she discusses her memories and encounters in the music industry: being sworn at by Johnny Rotten; touring with Underworld; discovering her love for drill and grime; and the keys to success for aspiring broadcasters. Listen to the episode in full.

Get familiar with Southeast Asia's myriad forms of maximalist dance music. Around Asia-Pacific, more producers and DJs are experimenting with popular music. From Vinahouse in Vietnam to dangdut in Indonesia, these interpretations of happy hardcore, house and gabber have traditionally been played out in taxi cabs, cybercafes and other public spaces but they're now increasingly being heard on the club circuit amid demand for culturally authentic sounds. Embraced by the likes of Manila Community Radio, Gabber Modus Operandi and others, these hybrid styles of high-BPM rave are part of a global movement championing local dance music—just look at the meteoric rise of South African and Afro-Portuguese genres like amapiano and batida. Since 2018, London collective Eastern Margins has been playing out music from North and Southeast Asia at parties in an effort to educate audiences on the region's diverse landscape of fast-paced club tunes. Speaking to Resident Advisor's Nyshka Chandran, cofounder David Zhou, AKA LUMI, dives into the cultural context behind Southeast Asian genres like budots and manyao, explaining their connection with contemporary rave music and the self-sustaining ecosystem behind their popularity at home. Listen to the conversation in full.

"I didn't see myself in French electronic music." The Parisian artist talks about representation, Southern rap and Notting Hill Carnival's enduring influence on her music live from C2C Festival. Crystelle Oyiri, the artist otherwise known as Crystallmess, has had a circuitous route through dance music. In this Exchange recorded live at C2C Festival with Whitney Wei, the Ivoirian-Guadeloupean artist discusses how she never saw herself represented in French techno, where artists like Daft Punk reigned supreme. "When you don't see yourself, you can't tell yourself that [music] is what you want to do," she reflects. Instead, she fell in love with Southern rap and artists like DJ Screw, who ignited her passion for music before she began experimenting with beats for the dance floor. Today, Oyiri is a full-time electronic music artist. A resident of NTS radio, she's also released on labels like PAN and created original productions for films and fashion brands, including Ottolinger. Her unique production style combines melodic techno, afro-trance, abrasive dancehall and what she calls "synthetic music"—genre-fluid mixes that switch effortlessly between pummeling techno cuts, high-speed electro and melodic trance. Listen to the conversation in full.

"When I first heard electro, I had an epiphany." The Georgian artist and Herrensauna resident talks about the genre she loves most, preparing for sets and remaining authentic to her sound. SALOME, now one of the scene's foremost purveyors of electro, has shot up in popularity over the last two years. Hailing from Tbilisi, she now lives in Berlin and is a resident of Herrensauna, where she's become a champion of the fast-paced dance music that the group tours worldwide. She's also graced the lineups of festivals like Pitch, Wire, and Dekmantel - where this talk was recorded live - and has released searing electro on labels like Lobster Theremin, Mechatronica, International Chrome, Darknet and more. In this interview moderated by Souhayla Ou-Oumar, SALOME talks about first falling in love with electronic music after a visit to Kyiv. She says she heard every local artist playing electro and breakbeats instead of techno, and she hasn't turned back since. The artist plays multiple gigs each weekend, and she talks about the process behind her preparation. She spends hours each week digging for music in multiple genres, creating what she calls "sound maps" for each of the territories she DJs in. This can be tricky, SALOME says, especially when she appears in places like Italy and Spain that expect to hear techno. But no matter where she's booked, she says she makes it a goal to remain true to her sound. Listen to the episode in full.

This panel live from Wire Festival examines the insidious costs and possible solutions for a problem that continues to mire touring DJs. Artists applying for a US artist visa face multiple obstacles: application fees of up to 6,000 USD, long wait times and lack of insurance or accountability should their visas be denied. What's more, the process must be completed every few years, ushering in a new cycle of potential roadblocks. In this panel recorded live at Wire Festival in New York, moderator Tyler Myers—Wire Festival's co-director—talks to Téa Abashidze, the booker and co-founder of Basement; David Amar, the co-founder of the International Artist Assistance Agency Fanfare; and Joe Sigmund, a partner and senior agent at the booking agency Surefire. Together they discuss how the process's prohibitive costs impact the electronic music ecosystem and homogenizes lineups. They also explore ways forward, including the power of musicians unions and nonprofit organizations to help engineer a more equitable and sustainable path for our scene. How do other countries, like Canada, deal with artist visas? And what happens when the US government raises visa application fees further, as was proposed in a recent push for tightening legislative change? Resident Advisor and Basement will be looking at this issue in more detail in 2024. In the meantime, listen to the episode in full.

"When I got started, there wasn't much diversity at all." The young DJ discusses Australia's QTBIPOC community, debuting at Dekmantel and more live from Pitch Festival. Australian talent Charlotte Frimpong, the DJ better known as C.FRIM, has become one of the country's most in-demand DJs over the last year. The Ghanian-Filipina artist kickstarted her career with a Boiler Room set at Sugar Mountain in December 2022, and since then, she's toured around Europe (and debuted at Dekmantel), becoming known for digging deep into her musical ancestry and weaving amapiano and Afro-electronic sounds creatively through her sets. In this interview recorded live at Pitch Music and Arts Festival, Frimpong talks to journalist Tanya Akinola about "air DJing" in her bedroom before being able to afford gear, and how her career has skyrocketed at such a rapid rate. Even though she hasn't been a name on the stage for a long time, she's managed to carve out a unique space for the QTBIPOC community with the party she co-runs, Dutty, which she says is for people who can relate to the afro-diaspora or who just want to open their minds to it. Listen to her thoughts on the series, starting to produce and more in the full episode.

"Always notice whatever is happening in the background." The acclaimed producer and composer discusses the art of meaningful listening and his latest LP, Silencio. Moritz von Oswald's legacy as one of the trailblazers of contemporary techno precedes him. The artist's initial claim to fame was his involvement in the duo Basic Channel with Mark Ernestus, a project that formed the dub techno canon in the '90s and is still a primary reference point for many, if not most, modern producers. He was also at the helm of the famous cutting and pressing plant Dubplates and Mastering in Berlin, which has become a home for countless artists over the years. But on this occasion, Oswald sat down to discuss a more recent project: his LP Silencio on Tresor Records, which came out in November. He talked with RA's senior producer, Chloe Lula, about his lifelong love of jazz, tapestry, French film, Southern Italian opera and music from Central Asia. He also reflects on his production process—an endless exploration of drama and dynamics. Oswald is fascinated with reducing sound to its most basic elements and broadening the capacity of what the ear can perceive. Most importantly, he's a critical listener, and in the final moments of the episode, he imparts wisdom on how he's learned to keep a conscious ear open to the world around him. Check out the episode in full.