RA.928 MCR-T & DJ Gigola

"I'm ready to bring back gatekeeping." The New Yorker staff writer discusses how to protect the underground, experimenting with drugs and her new book, Health and Safety. Can drugs help us find meaning in music and nightlife? This is a question that today's Exchange guest, New Yorker staff writer Emily Witt, asks in earnest in her new book Health and Safety: A Breakdown. Just released in hardcover in the UK and Europe, the memoir traces Witt's life in her early-to-mid 30s. A journalist living and working in Brooklyn, she began experimenting with psychedelics and club drugs after years of living what she describes as a conservative, straight-and-narrow, middle-class life. She became enamoured with the borough's underground raves, frequenting events like the festival Sustain-Release, the party Unter and sets at Bushwick haunt Bossa Nova Civic Club, all while falling in love with an aspiring DJ and producer she calls Andrew. As the book progresses, Witt documents the growing MAGA movement in America, gun rights rallies and mass shootings. As the country falls apart, she watches her romantic relationship fall apart, too. Drugs and Brooklyn nightlife, she writes, became both an escape and a way to rearrange a world that she starts to feel no longer makes sense. Witt shares critical opinions about the underground scene's capacity to be a utopia and place of belonging in an increasingly hostile world, arguing that there should be more gatekeeping in place to protect a scene that's threatened by capitalism and the mainstream. She also interrogates what she calls "woke identity politics" in Brooklyn, the lack of change that came from the Black Lives Matter movement, empty calls for political protest that dominated the early days of the pandemic and why, despite everything, she's chosen to stay in Brooklyn for good. Listen to the episode in full. -Chloe Lula

A rare club mix from the ever-evolving artist, with 90 minutes of shadowy, atmospheric pressure. Music's therapeutic value is often linked to relaxation—gongs, singing bowls and the like. Dense passages of foggy droning and eerie static aren't traditionally considered restorative, but Laurel Halo makes a pretty good case for it. The Detroit-born, Los Angeles-based musician's abstract, often improvised productions are heavy on sound design and emotional climax. Driven by atmosphere rather than rhythm, they push listeners to grapple with their innermost insecurities, fears and dreams. "I'm lucky my music has helped people through crises," Halo once told Discwoman. It's easy to see why. Since her 2010 debut King Felix, Halo has built a stunningly diverse catalogue of classically-informed records. A multi-instrumentalist—piano, violin, guitar, keys—her sharpest instrument is arrangement. Inspired by the surrealism of Italo Calvino and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, her releases, from Atlas to Behind The Green Door, unfold with slow-burning narrative and dense emotional weight. Her soundworlds are layered and labyrinthine—an architectonic space where self-reflection happens almost by force. Even in the club, the sought-after composer excels in immersion. Her sets extend the expressionist palette of her records, trading traditional rhythm for tension, space and surprise. It’s no wonder she takes a genre-agnostic approach to the dance floor—her deep roots in freeform radio began at WCBN-FM in Michigan, followed by Berlin Community Radio, Rinse FM, and now a regular show on NTS. RA.992 stitches foggy ambient loops, propulsive techno, mutant percussion and heady left turns with care. Tracks from DJ Rush, Octave One and Eddie Fowlkes nod to her Midwestern heritage, balanced out by deeper, psychedelic fare from the likes of Polygonia and Cousin. It's the mark of an artist revealing both deep curiosity and a precise hand as a selector. Rare, indeed. @laurelhalo Find the full interview at ra.co/podcast/992

"Is the infrastructure working?" The Canadian DJ and producer talks playing Coachella 2025 and the music industry's unequal power dynamics. Is the electronic music industry pay-to-play? This week's RA Exchange with Jamaican-Canadian DJ and producer BAMBII tackles this question, exploring whether innate talent is really enough to become an artist, or if success favours those with privileged socioeconomic backgrounds. BAMBII, a queer club innovator whose exhilarating, rave-ready records exist at the crossroads of jungle, dancehall, drum & bass and UK garage, lives in Toronto. She made waves earlier this year when she posted a viral Instagram story about her set at US festival Coachella, where she said she was forced to play with malfunctioning sound and DJ equipment. As she explains to today's host, British journalist Tara Joshi, the debacle spoke to a broader issue about an economy built on exploitation. BAMBII played the festival for free, paying her way to the gig in exchange for exposure. The music industry, she argues, thrives on unequal power dynamics: her experience was one of countless examples of how many artists are taught to be grateful for anything, and to be silent if they feel otherwise. "The music industry shows us how the world operates when there are no rules," she claims. "There is an assault on ethics and care in this industry. People love to recreate capitalism in the highest form." In the interview, BAMBII also speaks about her forthcoming album—Infiniti Club II, out June 20th—as well as the North American club scene and the local grassroots collectives that she believes are keeping underground nightlife alive. Listen to the episode in full. -Chloe Lula

Club futurism and a stack of new material from one of São Paulo's boldest shapeshifters. BADSISTA doesn't do stasis. In fact, he prefers to be in a constant state of motion. It was immediately obvious when the São Paulo artist broke out with his 2016 self-titled EP, in which a bass-heavy melange of baile funk, dembow and trap demonstrated an ability to satiate almost any dance floor. But BADSISTA continued to evolve through the different moods and textures of the club: from experimental compositions with Brazilian trans icon Linn Da Quebrada to ballroom bass and heads-down funk shellers for TraTraTrax. This RA Podcast finds BADSISTA in a fluid place once more. The mood starts out slow and moody—one of a slew of unreleased BADSISTA tracks—before seamlessly morphing into the soul-stirring synthwork of Al Lover Meets Cairo Liberation Front. Then he gets playful: tasteful, techy house morphs into smutty baile funk. (And as for the guests, look out for Sully's "XT" and a spicy Batu rework.) BADSISTA's style is connected by a uniquely Latin sense of rhythm and groove. Here, dramatic synths build up to even more dramatic funk crescendos. Perreo rattles appear in and out of the mix, as if acting as a reminder for people to move. But really, above all, this mix radiates with aliveness. When you whittle it down to the bare essentials, all that matters is the joy and connectivity you feel within yourself and the world around you. BADSISTA is an excellent facilitator, and you'll hear as much on RA.991. @badsista Find the tracklist and interview at ra.co/podcast/986

"I'm an individualist." The Throbbing Gristle co-founder on extreme experimentation, difficult women and her new album, 2t2. As long as underground culture has existed, there have been pockets of resistance—people at the fringes who challenge societal expectations and create work that pushes against societal norms. Cosey Fanni Tutti is one of them. She's a founding member of the defunct British band Throbbing Gristle, a visual artist, pornographic model, solo musician and writer. Tutti, now 73, grew up in the English city of Hull, where she met like-minded performer Genesis P-Orridge. Together, they formed Throbbing Gristle and the collective COUM. Their activations and installations were, unequivocally, shocking. In one show, Tutti urinated on the audience as she swung naked across the stage. In another, the band performed alongside framed displays of her used menstrual pads. Throbbing Gristle's extreme experimentations flirted with the erotic and the grotesque, pushing the limits of sound and frequency. Their outsider approach to making music—and their erasure of the boundary that separates life and art—went on to influence a generation of creatives across genres, especially in early techno. After Throbbing Gristle disbanded, Tutti performed as synth pop duo Chris & Cosey with her husband and ex-band member, Chris Carter. Her work as a solo artist has blossomed in recent years. She published her memoir, Art Sex Music, in 2017. After turning 66, she also wrote two full-length albums and wrote another book, Re:Sisters, which explores the life and legacy of the late composer Delia Derbyshire who faced adversity as a woman in a male-dominated world, like Tutti herself. In this Exchange with with Chloe Lula, Tutti discusses her dedication to living alternatively, expressing herself by any means possible and her forthcoming album, 2t2, composed during a time of extreme difficulty in her personal life. The underground icon also talks about mastering Mongolian throat singing and her upcoming solo art exhibition in New York, which will display the pornographic photos she took as a model in her 20s. Listen to the episode in full.