RA Podcast Folgen

Kicking off a run of artist-on-artist Exchanges for RA25, the musical multi-hyphenates discuss poetry, religion and their experiences as protectors of oratorical tradition. There's a deep creative current running between music and poetry, and Saul Williams and James Massiah know those waters well. This week’s RA Exchange is the first in a series of intergenerational artist-on-artist conversations we’ll be running to mark our 25th anniversary. In it, Williams—the Grammy-nominated poet, musician, writer and actor—and Massiah—a South London poet and musician—talk about lyricism and what first drew them to the written word. Both grew up in the church: Williams as the son of a Baptist preacher, Massiah in the Seventh-day Adventist church, raised on the King James Bible. They discuss how those upbringings shaped their sense of oratory and morality, and the tension between rejecting institutional religion and still holding on to its aesthetic traditions. They also get into what happens when a poem meets music, and what a dance floor can be beyond entertainment. Williams argues it has always been a training ground: a space for resistance, ceremony and mobilisation, where ideas can spark minds and movements. Massiah, meanwhile, explains how simply wanting to keep partying ended up radicalising him. As he puts it: "Where are we going to party if the bad guys have got all the good party locations?" The conversation was recorded in Amsterdam, where Williams performed with Underground Resistance. His new album, Leap Life, is out now on Big Dada. Listen to the full episode.

A showcase of East Coast club music, old and new, from a new Baltimore star. Baltimore doesn't get the credit it deserves. Maryland's largest city gave the world Baltimore club, a blueprint for much of the East Coast's dance music—Jersey club and Philly club both trace their lineage back to it. The scene is alive and kicking, and Tromac, real name Miles Cowling, is at the heart of it. From Prince George's County, Cowling moved to Baltimore in 2019. In 2022 they launched Break A Leg, a party series and safe space for people to dance their pain away, and they've collaborated with RA cover star Zack Fox, Black Rave Culture and Cortisa Star. "You know how long I been waiting for this. I'm about to make a name for myself," begins RA.1058. From there, Cowling twists through contemporary East Coast club—OSSX, JIALING, JD. Reid, AceMo, DJ Swisha—plus honorary peers Bored Lord, Conducta and Jam City. Across 38 tracks in 66 minutes, it's high-tempo but not for the sake of it: sometimes coasting, sometimes jumping, sometimes letting it all out. About halfway through, a Tucker Carlson sample calls Baltimore one of the most dangerous cities around. Cowling's answer: "There are beautiful things here, don't come down to play the fuck around." Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1077 @tromac @breakalegparty @hochiruns @3SIDEmusic

An hour of ancient and alien sounds from the Catalan composer and PAN favourite. Marina Herlop is at once from the future and from the past. The classically trained Catalan singer's voice opens a door onto an older world—a nymph out of a Romantic painting. Underneath, something deeply alien. "When you're writing a song… there's a moment of expulsion, like a squid spitting," she told Pitchfork. She didn't open a laptop until her third album, learning Ableton from scratch over a fortnight in her father's family home in the Aragon hills. That record, Pripyat, and its follow-up Nekkuja landed on PAN, placing her among the experimental queens like Eartheater and Jenny Hval—with a touch of Björk. Her RA Mix brings those influences to the surface: classical with a whiff of the strange (Holst's Rig Veda hymns, Sakamoto playing Ravel), music for worlds that don't exist (Ragnarok Online, Jujutsu Kaisen, Morricone) and a study in everything a voice can be made into. Barely any is club music. Assembled in Ableton—"I don't have access to a CDJ right now," she says—RA.1057 is a soundtrack for decompression. Asked which club shaped her most, she named one that isn't: El Pumarejo, the Barcelona space where she met the musicians still in her band. Find the Q&A and tracklist at ra.co/podcast/1076 @marinaherlopofficial