RA.1000 Jyoty

Andrew Weatherall's first official posthumous mix. The only b2b DJ Harvey ever agreed to. Six hours at Trouw. This one's special. When mulling which direction to go in for RA's 1000th mix celebrations, many options came to mind. Some shadowy character 2-stepping around the fringe of our collective consciousness? An impossible-level IDM icon? All tempting. But, ultimately, we are a DJ-forward publication and this is a DJ mix series. It felt truer to the history of the RA Podcast to release deep vault material from a time when the world of niche records felt different, tighter, more discrete. The fourth-longest mix in the RA Podcast's history is an unrepeatable marathon set recorded in 2012 at a superclub that no longer exists. 2012, incidentally, is farther away from 2025 than 2012 was from 2000... if we have to clock it, so do you. It's the coming together of one British icon who passed away in 2020, and another whose time on the road has scaled back considerably as of late. DJ Harvey agreed to exactly one b2b set in his life: this one, with Andrew Weatherall. The night took place at Trouw, an Amsterdam club already considered legendary before it shuttered its doors in the opening hours of 2015, as part of an RA series anchored around start-to-close combinations. Harvey was at the peak of an irresistible career second act, which dovetailed with a disco revival that dominated clubs for years. Weatherall, with infinite brownie points stockpiled from the '90s, remained everyone's favourite debonair psychonaut. What follows is 385 minutes of arpeggiated chug and slow-cresting climaxes, chronicling a moment when the resting heart rate of dance floors plunged lower than potentially any comparable point in the 21st century. If you've got time to spare, a fun side game is sussing out who plays what. A disco-dub cover of Echo & the Bunnymen? Smart money's on Weatherall. Exuberant EQ'ing of The Isley Brothers? Gotta be Harvey. As for the low 'n slow, lightly spangled house that was all the rage in the early 2010s (think Maxxi Soundsystem, Disco Bloodbath, Rub & Tug, C.O.M.B.I. and Full Pupp), it's anyone's guess. 127 BPM feels practically like a racecar. When we kicked off our RA.1000 campaign, we outlined a few goals: tick off a handful of long-awaited dream guests, honour architects who shaped the world around us and deliver recordings you truly can't hear anywhere else. We sought to render an accurate picture of DJ culture in 2025 for the longhaul. DJing and the mythmaking around it has undergone a quantum leap since 2012, let alone 2006, 1996 or 1989. For those of us who were kicking around in the former, there's a creeping melancholy that our prime is fast becoming a matter of historical record. The killing moon really did come too soon. Where will DJ sets—or any of this—be in 2044? Hard to say. Best not to overthink that one. Instead, we want to say thanks to all contributors on the series so far. Now enjoy luxuriating in the company of two of the greatest to ever do it, together, for the first and last time.⁠ – Gabriel Szatan, Editor (RA) @andrew-weatherall Read the interview with DJ Harvey and Andrew Weatherall's family at https://ra.co/podcast/1016. Listen to all RA.1000 mixes, as well as the complete history of the RA Podcast, at 1000.ra.co

For RA.1000, we take it back to the source with two never-before-heard tapes from Frankie Knuckles's private collection, the Godfather of House. There is no house music without Frankie Knuckles, literally or figuratively. The queer icon's luxurious DJ sets at Chicago's Warehouse gave a rising movement its name. From there, countless offshoots splintered and travelled the globe. But what did the genesis and growth of the sound really feel like? The Godfather of House left behind not only timeless records, but personalised cassettes with hand-drawn liner notes handed out to friends and family. Two of those, dated to 1989 and 1996, have been digitised especially for RA.1000. (Thank you to the Frankie Knuckles Foundation.) To put that in context: the first tape predates not only many of today's active clubbers, but the entire existence of jungle, drum & bass, UK garage, French touch, Jersey club, Afrobeats, IDM, baile funk, hardcore, footwork, dubstep, dub techno, tech house, breaks, minimal, maximal, gqom, gabber, grime and hyperpop. In short… that's a very, very long time ago. The world of dance music was much smaller. DJ culture was functionally unrecognisable from the one we see in 2025. And yet, to some degree, what you'll hear on RA.1000 hasn't changed at all. It's a capture of not only what made Frankie Knuckles one of the beloved pioneers of first-generation dance music, but what draws people to club culture in the first place. The mood on these Frankie Knuckles sets outlasts even its creator: a spirit of optimism that floods the world's best dance floors and keeps dance music pulsing on into the future, nearly 40 years later, in spite of it all. We end our 1000th mix celebrations here because it all starts there. Find the tracklist at ra.co/podcast/1018. Listen to all RA.1000 mixes, as well as the complete history of the RA Podcast, at 1000.ra.co

One of the enduring powerhouses of our era returns for RA.1000 with a riotous mix. When Helena Hauff made her first RA Podcast appearance back in 2013, she was on the eve of releasing her debut production on Actress' Werkdiscs imprint. In the 12 years that have elapsed, she's become not just a household name within electronic music, but the kind of rare talent that lives in seclusion from industry tumultt. (Hauff, enviously, has never even owned a smartphone.) Her calling card continues to be her penchant for rough and ready EBM, electro and new wave. Her unique ability is creating a singular listening experience from disparate or out-of-favour tracks, with a raw immediacy that functions as a redress to over-choreographed modern DJing. Her outsider approach is on show once again for RA.1000. Threaded together by strobe-lit DIY electronica, old-school acid house and corrosive machine funk that chews up the ear, the nearly two-hour set raises the bar once again. In the sci-fi themed first half, Hauff drops two Cybotron tracks, nodding to Juan Atkins' blueprint for electro. You'll also hear "Riot" by Underground Resistance, the definitive mission statement for a world ablaze. This is musical anarchism, executed to the highest degree. Find the tracklist and interview at ra.co/podcast/1017. Listen to all RA.1000 mixes, as well as the complete history of the RA Podcast, at 1000.ra.co

The arena-conquering duo glide from gritty rave to skyscraping arpeggios on RA.1000, a mix many years in the making. A new name undeniably entered the pantheon of major electronic live acts over the past decade: next to Faithless, The Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers, now sit @feelmybicep. The Belfast duo's music doesn't half reach for the stars: a melodic blend of ambient, breakbeat, trance and tech house, able to turn the biggest arenas into intimate affairs. If anything, mainstream success, BRIT Award nominations and mammoth dance crossovers like "Glue" have only hardened Andy Ferguson and Matt McBriar's resolve to keep innovating. Their prized blog, running for nearly as long as the RA Podcast, regularly platforms upcoming artists. And you won't find many festival headliners releasing climate change-themed records with Indigenous artists, as they did recently on Takkuuk. RA.1000 exists in that spirit. After many polite declines, and before a year off to usher in the next era, Bicep come through at the last: from dub techno and screwface breaks to São Paulo garage, before a tide of signature synths floods the zone. Stadium-sized intimacy at its finest. @feelmybicep Find the tracklist and interview at ra.co/podcast/1015. Listen to all RA.1000 mixes, as well as the complete history of the RA Podcast, at 1000.ra.co.

For RA.1000, DJ Sprinkles' first mix in over a decade is a powerful meditation on the genocide in Gaza. Dance music often relies on simple narratives: release, escape, unity. But those narratives can often feel inadequate, and even at times, hollow. Or, as Terre Thaemlitz might bluntly put it, just "shitty." For her first mix in around 15 years, Terre Thaemlitz AKA DJ Sprinkles, challenges us to think differently. "I felt this 1000th podcast should reflect the moment in which it was made," she told us in her Q&A. And what is this moment? Every day since Israel's 2023 assault on Gaza began, an average of 28 children have been killed. That's an entire classroom, every day, for over 600 days (at the time of writing). It's a staggering figure that only captures a fragment of the listless cruelty imposed on the strip. Faced with such a genocide, what can music really do? How political can it truly be? For their RA.1000, Thaemlitz gives us an unflinching rebuke to the idea that music should provide escapism. The mix weaves ambient fragments and jazz passages, woven around samples from Israeli media and the voices of outspoken Jewish critics like Gabor Maté and Norman Finkelstein. The result is not just a protest, but a document of our time. For Terre Thaemlitz, music is never just music. Her RA.1000 serves as a reminder that in an age of relentless suffering, the most political act is to reject the illusion of escape, and search for something greater. Read the interview and find the tracklist at ra.co/podcast/1013. Listen to all RA.1000 mixes, as well as the complete history of the RA Podcast, at 1000.ra.co.