Since 2016, London based Forest Drive West has been building a rapidly growing catalogue of releases, receiving critical acclaim for records on labels such as Livity Sound, Hidden Hawaii and Rupture London. He's a dope selector too. Enjoy!

ITPS068 FOREST DRIVE WEST

Purelink have been described more than once as an "ambient boy band." (They themselves say "jam band.") It's not meant dismissively—the American trio purposefully mean to function as a band, even if their main instruments are laptops. Ambient might not quite cut it as a descriptor, though. The group's music crosses eras and scenes, touching on the late '90s clicks & cuts boom as well as the billowy ambient techno put out by labels like 3XL, West Mineral Ltd. and NAFF. 

Their most recent LP, Signs, released on enigmatic imprint Peak Oil (and one of our favourite albums of 2023), is especially impressive, made of stuttering rhythms and glassy textures. In other words, it's ambient-not-ambient. While members Concave Reflection, kindtree and Millia have all made excellent music on their own, something special happens when they come together.

Purelink's RA Podcast is another stellar contribution to our post-New Year's tradition, where we highlight a more laid-back sound to soothe weary minds and frazzled brain cells after the heavy holiday celebrations. This is 90-plus minutes of intricately textured downtempo, dub techno and even UK garage, all cut through with a floaty, almost drowsy quality, with plenty of exclusives and unreleased cuts from the likes of Nick León, James K, Downstairs J and more. It highlights Purelink's position as a bridger of worlds, sounds and tempos.

Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/917

RA podcast

RA.917 Purelink

Live from Jupiter Park at Lost Village 2023.

www.lostvillage.com

Next Edition: 22—25 August 2024

Live from Lost Village - Nabihah Iqbal [DJ Set]

@pyramidofknowledge

Eunoia - or beautiful thinking - a fourth DE RIO compilation reflecting on the accelerating life pace where sound assists the mindwork and gravitates ideas borne across fragile imaginations. A massive 17-track сompilation is featuring rising stars and boundary-pushing talents, artists whose creativity is determining the sound of the future electronic scene like Feral, Pianeti Sintetici, Vel, Alpha Tracks, and many more, a novelty substratum in its spectral variety. Loyal to endless sonic exploration for the dance floor of the present future, this release showcases the multi-dimensional soundscapes at the core of techno’s nonconformist spirit. Hear Aratak’s rhythmic pull of absolute traction, dive into Dwelve13's comforting bass and avant-garde piano, feel Answer's bleep integrity, lose yourself in Plate's circular patterns, journey through Wild Moss' psytrance reformations, and slow down for a second with Lenti Sistemi’s leftfield basis and fine-detailed ambience.

Mastered by Dekeyden 
Designed by Enrico Caldini
Words by Lucia Kagramanyan

Eunoia

Gea Mid

K.O.P. 32 - Gea Mid

"I'm not the same person i was 5 seconds ago."

This month’s West Mineral Kiosk show comes by way of NYC-based visual artist/producer/goated individual, innerfreekling. 

🌐 "Outsiders" is our daily show hosted by labels, collectives, agencies, venues, clubs, ... worldwide
📡 Connect with the Outsiders, every day, at 9 am or 9 pm CET
🔗 kioskradio.com

Outsiders: West Mineral Ltd. w/ innerfreekling @ Kiosk Radio 03.06.2025

Experimentalist Perila in her signature style for our July show. Her newest album “omnis festinatio ex parte diaboli est” is out now on West Mineral LTD.

🌐 "Outsiders" is our daily show hosted by labels, collectives, agencies, venues, clubs, ... worldwide
📡 Connect with the Outsiders, every day, at 9 am or 9 pm CET
🔗 kioskradio.com

Outsiders: West Mineral Ltd. w/ Perila @ Kiosk Radio 01.07.2025

Psyched to host beloved Brooklyn DJ, chef, and club babe Nutrition Facts for this month’s FADA2EYAT on Radio Alhara. 

DJing, for them, is like freestyle cooking: no rules, no recipes — just a knack for blending sounds spontaneously into something unexpectedly delicious, yet deeply intentional. In other words, they control mayhem meticulously.

Their take on FADA2EYAT is a testament for that, serving an unmistakable narrative of tension and release. There are moments that give ritualistic space function, and others that feel like graceful downspirals into a black hole. 

Expect deep bass, poetic rhythms, and intense hypnosis as one of my favorites steps up.
🎨 Mimi (Mohamed Abdelrahman)

FADA2EYAT 05 w/ Nutrition Facts - Radio Alhara 21/7/25

RA.1000 continues with the pride of Palestine's techno scene, Sama' Abdulhadi.

What makes the sound of resistance? For Palestinian DJ and producer Sama' Abdulhadi, it's the freedom to explore her artistic expression in all its authenticity and complexity. What stands out in her mix for our 1000th celebration is defiant energy, the kind that galvanises more than just dance floors.

Born in Ramallah but a student of Beirut's underground scene, Abdulhadi plays charging, self-assured techno, as calibrated for basement parties as for conquering festival main stages.

Her sets are powerful journeys through moods, tempos and stimuli, connected by a deep sense of love. A love for the music, the craft, the soil from which Abdulhadi grew. It's a love we've explored in a cover story, a film and now one of our ten RA.1000 mixes.

As Abdulhadi notes in her accompanying interview, her entry to the series forms a link back to another "pride and joy of Palestine," with Bethlehem-descending Nicolás Jaar's entry on RA.500. Yet ten years on, the landscape is altered beyond all recognition.

As we all watch the ongoing destruction of Palestinian land, this mix is an unequivocal reminder that we cannot look away. It continues techno's decades-old lineage as vital resistance music.

@sama_abdulhadi

Find the tracklist and interview at ra.co/podcast/1010. Listen to all RA.1000 mixes, as well as the complete history of the RA Podcast, at https://1000.ra.co

RA.1000 Sama' Abdulhadi

The mastermind behind Basic Channel, Hard Wax and Rhythm & Sound doesn't do mixes. For RA.1000, he made an exception.

Trace Mark Ernestus's path, and you trace the evolution of electronic sound itself. The timeline of contemporary Berlin is unimaginable without him. At first, that meant Hard Wax, the crucial hub that shaped the early era of the city's techno revolution. Carl Craig once said it plainly: "Mark was ground zero."

From there, Ernestus never stopped. There's the birth of dub techno and the near-flawless catalogue that followed through Basic Channel and Rhythm & Sound. There's his immersion in Senegalese mbalax with Ndagga Rhythm Force. Lately, that means Open Ground the Wuppertal bunker that's letting people hear music as never before.

As part three of RA.1000, Ernestus has kindly supplied his first studio DJ mix. As you might expect, it's technically immaculate, but more than that, it feels like a substantial and generous conduit to one of the world's most vital genres.

Amapiano remains underexplored in music media. Publications like our own are still learning to keep pace with the South African sound's global pull, animating millions across the globe. 

You'll hear the range and richness of the genre across the near two-hour mix, from the gothic, percussive stomp of Caltetonic's "Bambela"  to the devotional glow of GemValleyMusiq's "Something Spiritual."

Through all of this, Ernestus has remained understated. He lets the music speak for him, with a quiet honesty that lies in decades of opening doors—creating the conditions for new sounds and scenes to flourish and carry the culture forward.

@opengroundclub @hardwax 

Find the tracklist and interview at ra.co/podcast/1011. Listen to all RA.1000 mixes, as well as the complete history of the RA Podcast, at https://1000.ra.co

RA.1000 Mark Ernestus

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 series' 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 scintillating minutes of arpeggiated chug and slow-cresting climaxes: a moment when the resting heart rate of dance floors plunged lower than any comparable point in the 21st century. A masterclass, entirely self-contained in audio form.

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 an F1 car.

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. Full send.

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 electronic music, 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 https://1000.ra.co

Total eclipse

shleepy