RA Podcast Folgen

As part of RA2122, our ongoing celebration of 21 years of club culture, we'll be featuring some of our favourite DJs from around the world, highlighting the parties or clubs most important to their lives in dance music. It's safe to say that there would be no house music, and no dance music as we know it, without François Kevorkian. The French-born, New York-based DJ started remixing disco records in the late-'70s when he was in his early 20s and became a pioneer of the form alongside names like Larry Levan, Tom Moulton and Walter Gibbons. And though he would become a house icon, he became especially known for the trippy "dub" mixes on the B-sides of records, which often eschewed the structure and vocals of the songs he was remixing in favour of excursions into the unknown. It's that legacy that led him to Deep Space, his Monday-night residency at the once-legendary Meatpacking District club Cielo, which was one of the most beloved (and best-sounding) rooms in Manhattan. Deep Space started at 2003 and ran weekly for 15 years, eventually moving to Output in Brooklyn. The idea was to explore "dub" in all its forms, and to play all kinds of music while manipulating it in real time. The slogan was "Live On The Mixing Board." At Deep Space you would hear all kinds of music. Dub, reggae, dub techno, drum & bass—and later on, as you''ll hear in this mix, dubstep—sure, but also disco, R&B, funk, old-school house. All music was dub in Kevorkian''s hands, and over the years Deep Space became one of the most renowned and consistent parties in New York, a place of refuge and discovery every single Monday (and, eventually, Sunday). This four-hour recording allows you to almost experience what it was like to be in that room—you can even hear the crowd whooping and cheering—as Kevorkian journeys through ultra-deep techno, dubstep and a string of funky disco and post-disco tracks. It''s a sound all his own, and though it was recorded 13 years ago, still sounds full of possibility and potential. Like the future. @fknyc Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/854

As part of RA2122, our ongoing celebration of 21 years of club culture, we'll be featuring some of our favourite DJs from around the world, highlighting the parties or clubs most important to their lives in dance music. First up we have Tama Sumo and Lakuti, both residents at Berlin's Panorama Bar, the house-focused room upstairs at Berghain. Panorama Bar has played host to thousands—if not millions—of people's most formative dance floor experiences, with an unparalleled vibe, near-perfect sound and window blinds that have taken their own place in dance music mythology. The duo's mix highlights the style that Tama Sumo and Lakuti have brought to the club and represents its anything-goes energy, mixing tracks from iconoclasts like Hieroglyphic Being (including one of his best-ever tracks) in with old-school favorites from Reel By Real, Larry Heard and even Ministry, moving from house to industrial to disco without batting an eyelid. Tama Sumo and Lakuti's loose but impeccable flow ties together house music history with a deep love and knowledge of all genres and, perhaps most importantly, the desire and know-how to just make people dance. We couldn't be more thrilled to feature Tama Sumo and Lakuti for the first mix in our birthday series, and we hope that you enjoy it as much as we do. Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/853

This week's RA Podcast marks something of a debut for Infinity Division, the new solo project from Canadian artist Ash Luk, best known as one half of EBM-techno duo Minimal Violence. (Minimal Violence had itself been a solo project since last year, when cofounder Lida P left the group.) Getting his start in Vancouver's punk scene as part of the band Lié, Luk's approach to dance music is informed not only by those origins but by Western Canada's long history with industrial music and techno (spot Skinny Puppy and Tunnel Canary in the tracklist). 
 Minimal Violence first impressed us with their hardware-focused house and techno, a harder-edged version of the sound that was sweeping Vancouver at the time, before moving on to Ninja Tune sub-label Technicolour and then Tresor for a series of records that saw their sound become more expansive, sharper and more melodic, incorporating not just techno and punk influences but also trance, EBM and more. These are the genres that feed into Infinity Division, and Luk's RA Podcast hurtles through everything from old Prodigy, '90s German hard trance, Canadian breakcore and new tracks from his project. This is heavy dance music that's also heavy on melody, unafraid of huge crescendoes that hit that sweet spot between punishment and euphoria. Buckle up. Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/852