Speed Garage & Breaks To Keep Liz At Bay

Closing set in the warehouse on Thursday night. 
Huge thanks to Aurora and all the festival staff. It meant the world to me!

Ben UFO - Sustain Release '23

The Medellín maverick opens RA.997 with another mind-altering home run.

As part of our countdown to the 1000th edition of the RA Podcast, a milestone in the 18-year history of Resident Advisor's weekly mix series, we're switching up the usual format.

This week, following heady excursions through Lagos, Kampala, Detroit and Chicago, our focus shifts to Latin America—arguably the story in underground electronic music since the pandemic.

After years of being all but overlooked internationally, the explosion of distinctive club sounds emerging from Peru, Brazil, Colombia and beyond has finally begun to get its due.

Among the movement's great success stories are two artists who exemplify its refreshingly undogmatic energy: Verraco and Bitter Babe, and the former handles the A-side of RA.997. 

Is there a more compelling electronic artist around right now? Both in the studio and behind the decks, the Medellín-based DJ and producer currently sits in that coveted creative sweet spot, where every fresh musical morsel feels like a moment. To bask in any of his singular tracks on VOAM, Timedance and now XL Recordings, is to be bowled over by their rhythmic brilliance, madcap hooks and whirlpool basslines. ("Basic Maneuvers," anyone?)

His mix is tough to pin down—a blend of dubby techno, tribal atmospheres, slanted bass and sharp edits. Or, as he puts it in the accompanying interview: “an intersection between dub-infused techno but with some flow, reduced atmospheric tribal, edgy bass cuts, mental emo-tek.”

There’s plenty of unreleased TraTraTrax material here, alongside tracks from artists like Virginia, A Made Up Sound and a euphoric flip of Ploy’s “Ramos.” Slippery, emotional and surgically precise, it’s Verraco doing what he does best.

Find the tracklist and interview at ra.co/podcast/1001

RA.997 Verraco

Seven and a half exhilarating hours from one of modern club's sharpest.

Tim Reaper's mammoth entry for RA.1000 is all about range. You thought the Future Retro London boss was just a jungle and hardcore head? Think again.

The mix's infinite-scroll tracklist (the longest we've ever published in full!) includes a who's who of top-rate producers, from A Guy Called Gerald and Cari Lekebusch to Batu, Mia Koden and the one and only Shackleton.

Opening with weighty grime and ending on head-spinning drum & bass, the mix journeys through US club, wobbly dubstep, classic techno and, of course, many shades of jungle. Rather than go the easy route, the Londoner approached the assignment with the curiosity, integrity and vulnerability of fellow shapeshifters like dBridge, Calibre and ASC.

"The idea was to represent other styles of electronic music that I've been a bit self-conscious about openly expressing my interest in," he told RA.

RA.1000 isn't just another side of Tim Reaper's artistry: thankfully for us, it feels like only the beginning.

@tim-reaper

Find the interview and tracklist at ra.co/podcast/1012. Listen to all RA.1000 mixes, as well as the complete history of the RA Podcast, at https://1000.ra.co

RA.1000 Tim Reaper

A four hour document of dance floors in the 2020s, from one of modern club music's most passionate advocates.

One major shift since we went 5 for RA.500 ten years ago has been the rapid adoption of anything-goes DJing. What goes us there? Upgraded technology, audience appetite for thrills, instant access to music from every corner of the globe: take your pick.

To corral the infinite possibilities of our age, glide seamlessly across lanes and be a trusted conduit in a sea of over-saturation takes chops. And few do it with more gusto and charisma in the 2020s than Jyoty.

Recorded at a raucous Nowadays party just a few weeks ago for maximum freshness, Jyoty's RA.1000 finds room for 122 tracks dotted over the clubbing map (although, when you tally up all the blends, you can probably round up to 150).

From aya to Logan Olm, Hardhouse Banton to DJ Babatr, Busy Signal to Baalti, a delicious double splice of Kelela and a staggeringly unlikely remix of Noir & Haze's "Around" (yep), it's an audacious statement from a DJ who has made borderless selection their calling card.

With a heavy lean on bubbling and the far frontiers of Brazilian club wares, long passages of the set are maze of microgenres and regional movements worth getting lost in. Jyoty's RA.1000 is a reminder not just of her dynamism in the booth, but a reminder to keep ears open and expose their audience to as much of the future as possible, as quickly as possible. And what could be truer to the foundations of DJing than that?

@jyotysingh

Find the tracklist and interview at https://ra.co/podcast/1014. Listen to all RA.1000 mixes, as well as the complete history of the RA Podcast, at https://1000.ra.co

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 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

RA.1000 DJ Harvey & Andrew Weatherall

For RA.1000, we take it back to the source with two never-before-heard tapes from Frankie Knuckles's private collection

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 https://1000.ra.co

RA.1000 Frankie Knuckles

1-hour DJ mix recorded live in my home studio featuring underground artists that I love  🎧  
Genres: Deep House / Tech House / Tribal House / Techno  
Mixed on Technics 1210 MK2s, Xone 92 + Evermix Box 4, filmed on Samsung S24  

Watch the live mix on my YouTube channel

Follow me on Instagram or TikTok for more insight into my record collection and DJ gigs

🌐 All my links & socials can be found at https://linktr.ee/highbrow76

Speed Garage & Breaks To Keep Liz At Bay

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