RA Podcast

It would be no exaggeration to say that 33EMYBW is one of the most original club music producers we've heard in recent years. In addition to being a talented visual artist and a bass player in the experimental band Duck Fight Goose, her solo productions are a highlight of Shanghai’s bustling underground scene—home to forward-thinking artists like Tzusing, Osheyack, Swimful and Hyph11e—moving with their own rhythmic language. She has a lexicon of drum sounds borrowed from all over the world, including tablas, bongos and mallets. As 33EMYBW, she puts together strange, multi-limbed rhythms that bring to mind images of dancing spiders and insects, something she addressed directly on 2019's showstopping Arthropods LP, released on the influential SVBKVLT label. As she says in the interview below, you basically need more than two legs to dance to her music. Maybe even eight. Her music deals with creatures that vary from the mythical to the everyday (her first album was called Golem). On her latest record Holes Of Sinian, also out on SVBKVLT, she imagines the mostly-unknown organisms from the recently discovered Ediacaran period. It's more esoteric, atmospheric and arguably even funkier than her previous work, with Marina Herlop on one hair-raising track that you can hear in a demo version on her RA Podcast. This mix is actually a version of her live set—a favourite at influential festivals like Unsound and CTM—featuring plenty of productions from across her career in mutated and improvisational forms. It's creepy, crawly and undeniably danceable. If you can keep up with it. @33emybw Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/912

What some refer to broadly as "Latin club music"—from dembow to raptor house—is having a moment on dance floors around the world. Since making his mark at Manchester's legendary Swing Ting parties in the 2010s, Florentino, who is of Colombian heritage, has melded high-pressure perreo, cumbia and other styles with high BPMs and fat-bottomed bass in his DJ sets and productions. The result is an ultra-kinetic, cross-cultural sound that's influenced by UK soundsystem culture as much as the sounds of the massive, diverse scenes across Latin America. The pan-Latin influences are a big part of Florentino's sound palette, but they by no means define him. Interspersed with dancehall and baile funk are dubstep, pummelling techno, house, UK funky, grime and more. Over the years, his experimental side has also crystallized, whether it's through the deep, sometimes trippy, reggaeton of Sangre Nueva, his collaborative project with Kelman Duran and DJ Python, his sought-after bootlegs of deconstructed guaracha, or the releases on his Club Romantico label. Most recently, he's signed with UK giant XL Recordings, including for his latest EP, Kilometro Quinze. His dizzying range and propensity for rhythmic contortions is on full display in his RA Podcast. This is a riotous mix with big drops, bouncy basslines and crispy textures, showcasing Florentino's talent as a proper party-starter. @deejayflorentino Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/912

At this point, Shy One might be familiar to most music fans as one of the hosts of NTS's daily breakfast show, Soup To Nuts, where she helps listeners across the UK and Europe settle into their morning routines with an eclectic and soulful selection of dance music and downtempo. But the London artist has been around a lot longer than that, with a discography that goes back well over a decade. She started releasing music as a regular on Scratcha DVA's label, and it was there that she sketched out a recognizable but impressively varied approach rooted in her home base of London. On her records, Shy One sometimes feels like London incarnate, synthesizing the histories of Black British dance music—drum & bass, grime, UK funky, broken beat, jazz, you name it—into one syncretic and immensely appealing sound. But her music glows with the warmth of American deep house, too, which lends it a timeless, ageless quality that has proven immensely appealing. She furthers this mission with Private World, a party she started with Ruby Savage. The name kind of says it all: she's inviting you to her own personal space, but what awaits is a whole wide world of music and culture. Her RA Podcast feels like a hybrid between a club DJ set and her morning show, and here, she zeroes in on a the lineage of American house music from the '90s and beyond, featuring tracks from the likes of Green Velvet, Marcellus Pittman, Roy Davis Jr., Wbeeza, Jay Daniel and more, plus a spotlight from Baltimore club king DJ Technics. It's patient and easygoing but perfect for a small dance floor (or a livingroom party), focused but stylistically diverse. It's everything we've come to expect from an artist like Shy One, who weaves stories and histories with her DJ sets, and does it effortlessly, too. @shyonebeats Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/911

Last month, with Goldie's guest curatorship of Resident Advisor, we focused on the history of one of the most important music genres and scenes to come out of the UK: drum & bass. With this RA Podcast from Kasra, we switch over to the style's cutting edge. He's probably best known for his long-running Critical Music label, whose name is instructive. You'll find some of the most essential, crucial drum & bass of the last two decades through its 20-plus year-old back catalogue. As a DJ and producer, Kasra embodies everything great about Critical and its approach: drum & bass with flair and personality, forward-thinking while staying true to the roots of the sound. The kind of music he plays is wide-ranging, but it usually leans towards the tight and minimalist. The basslines stop and start like stuck engines, drums hit with the mechanical precision of a Swiss-made watch, the MCs move with a tactical flow. Kasra's RA Podcast is a blend of new and old cuts from the likes of Skeptical, Halogenix, Break and the boundary-breaking Ivy Lab, plus a few cuts from the man himself. @kasra-critical Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/910

909 is a special number for us at RA—the name of one of the most hallowed drum machines in all of music, and one of the foundations of techno music—and we're more than happy to offer it up to a DJ who has been a long-time favourite of our team: Glasgow's Bake. In fact, we commissioned this mix roughly ten years ago, but you can't rush perfection. When Bake emerged as one of the heads heads behind the label All Caps—a relatively short-lived but influential imprint that released massive tracks like Flørist's "Marine Drive" and Kowton's "TFB"—he also quickly became one of the most impressive DJs in the post-dubstep access, appearing frequently at Hessle Audio events and sharpening his skills behind the decks at the country's best parties. Now he runs his own, Spirit, at Sub Club. He has a wide-ranging style that touches on all kinds of leftfield techno and broken drum patterns. His nearly two-hour RA Podcast finds him at the end of a sort-of comeback year, and it touches on tracks from Shackleton, Laksa, Batu, Karima F and Levon Vincent, to give you an idea. It's the kind of mix that oozes expertise and practice without feeling showy—the signs of a truly great DJ. If you don't know Bake, then now you do. @bake-all-caps Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/909