Side 1

Ask A Beautiful Question

Donato Dozzy has long been a revered figure in the global electronic music scene, known for his rare ability to craft hypnotic soundscapes that linger in the mind. Whether in contemporary clubs or classical settings, his sets consistently conjure deep moods and immersive atmospheres.

With this being his first mix release in over 5 years, we’re treated to an early insight into what he’ll bring to Continuum on February 1st. 

RA tickets: https://ra.co/events/2051095

051 - Donato Dozzy - fabric podcast

A clinic in minimal from the elusive Acting Press boss. 

Why do certain sounds cultivate a cult following? Simply put, it's often because they resist easy consumption. PLO Man and his imprint Acting Press lean into this. 

Searching for the Berlin-based DJ and producer, you won’t find much online presence, interviews or conventional PR. What you will find, if you look hard enough, is a catalogue of records and mixes with a kind of tape hiss charm (a spiritual successor to Basic Channel and Chain Reaction, but scuzzier and lighter on its feet).

Founded in 2015, Acting Press once seemed to belong to the short-lived "outsider house" trend, but is now synonymous with a certain strain of modern minimal, one that is analogue, spacious and pointedly opaque. PLO Man's output is equally sparse by design: this week, he joins the RA Podcast with a characteristically elusive style, accompanying the near two-hour mix is a one-answer Q&A that gives almost nothing away.

Stripped-back, ever-so-slightly sleazy and coated in dust, PLO Man's RA Podcast continues that lineage in style. Opening with the featherlight microhouse of Margaret Dygas, RA.988 unfolds into a carefully curated spectrum of minimal, dub and deep techno. Among familiar names—look out for the blinding Rhythm & Sound and Moodymann blend—are deep cuts and left turns alongside the odd outlier, like lovers' rock pioneer Gregory Isaacs.

Like the best of his forebears, PLO Man wants RA.988 to take time for you to settle in. But once you do, you won’t want to leave. 

@p_el_oh

Find the tracklist and interview at ra.co/podcast/988

RA.988 PLO Man

Eamon Harkin and Justin Carter back to back at the opening Sunday of Mister Sunday's 2025 season. May 11, 2025. "We wanna see this every week."

Justin Carter and Eamon Harkin at Mister Sunday, May 11, 2025

I’m sharing my set from @nowadaysnyc from February, closing out the Sunday evening of the Nonstop party after Ayesha's crazy set. This was one of my favourite moments DJing ever I think. Pure synergy in one of my favourite places to play in the world.

The first track is something new from me, keep your eyes peeled more info soon. 👀

Theres a load of genre hopping over the four hours but everything felt quite natural and seamless, taking things from peak time bass music down to a soft house music landing with a few twists and turns along the way.

Beautiful and affirming moment dancefloor moments are not to be taken for granted! Much love to everyone who danced.

Batu @ Nowadays Nonstop - NYC [16th Feb 2025]

Three hours of sun-kissed-bliss, made for endless beach days, long sweaty nights and dancing until sunrise. This year arriving right in time for solstice and the official start of summer.

Featuring music by Pianoman, Alex Kassian, The Trip, Spray, Wigs, Aldonna, Masalo, Di After, Clint, Sam Alfred, Match Box, Aiden Francis, Mixolydian, Baldo, Demi Riquísimo, Man/Ipulate, André Zimmer, Vince Void, Lewis Taylor, Kara Okay, Chicane and many more.

Dagen Van Diamant Vol. 3 (Summer Mix '25)

"Designing clubs is about understanding psychology." The famed architects talk about bringing emotions, durability and hidden logic into era-defining nightlife spaces.

How do you design the world's best clubs? Studio Karhard, the architecture firm started by Thomas Karsten and his wife, Alexandra Erhard, in 2003, know exactly which ingredients go into a successful nightlife space. The Berlin-based duo are the visionaries behind Berghain and ∄ in Kyiv, as well as a number of private residences, businesses and smaller venues around the world. Their specialty, they say, is salvaging forgotten spaces and resurrecting them to serve a new purpose. 

In this RA Exchange, Karsten talks about first coming across the building that's now Berghain and working tirelessly with engineers and city planners to preserve its neoclassical facade. As he explains, creating a memorable atmosphere goes beyond just designing for aesthetics. There are countless hidden design features that serve to make venues like Berghain comfortable. 

But according to Karsten, Studio Karhard's masterpiece is ∄, which they began designing in 2018. He describes the special experience of first visiting the abandoned  brewery—which was then in extreme disrepair—and bringing the lessons they took away from building Berghain to make this Ukrainian space their most successful project yet. 

This episode takes a look under the hood of the psychology, anthropology and emotional study that inform the venues that have shaped underground electronic music culture. Listen to it in full. -Chloe Lula

EX.775 Studio Karhard

For RA.1000, DJ Sprinkles' first mix in over a decade is a powerful meditation on the genocide in Gaza.

Dance music often relies on simple narratives: release, escape, unity. But those narratives can often feel inadequate, and even at times, hollow. Or, as Terre Thaemlitz might bluntly put it, just "shitty."

For her first mix in around 15 years, Terre Thaemlitz AKA DJ Sprinkles, challenges us to think differently. "I felt this 1000th podcast should reflect the moment in which it was made," she told us in her Q&A.

And what is this moment? Every day since Israel's 2023 assault on Gaza began, an average of 28 children have been killed. That's an entire classroom, every day, for over 600 days (at the time of writing). It's a staggering figure that only captures a fragment of the listless cruelty imposed on the strip.

Faced with such a genocide, what can music really do? How political can it truly be?  For their RA.1000, Thaemlitz gives us an unflinching rebuke to the idea that music should provide escapism. The mix weaves ambient fragments and jazz passages, woven around samples from Israeli media and the voices of outspoken Jewish critics like Gabor Maté and Norman Finkelstein. 

The result is not just a protest, but a document of our time. For Terre Thaemlitz, music is never just music. Her RA.1000 serves as a reminder that in an age of relentless suffering, the most political act is to reject the illusion of escape, and search for something greater.

Read the interview and find the tracklist at ra.co/podcast/1013. Listen to all RA.1000 mixes, as well as the complete history of the RA Podcast, at https://1000.ra.co

RA.1000 Terre Thaemlitz / DJ Sprinkles

One of the enduring powerhouses of our era returns for RA.1000 with a riotous mix.

When Helena Hauff made her first RA Podcast appearance back in 2013, she was on the eve of releasing her debut production on Actress' Werkdiscs imprint. In the 12 years that have elapsed, she's become not just a household name within electronic music, but the kind of rare talent that lives in seclusion from industry tumultt.

(Hauff, enviously, has never even owned a smartphone.)

Her calling card continues to be her penchant for rough and ready EBM, electro and new wave. Her unique ability is creating a singular listening experience from disparate or out-of-favour tracks, with a raw immediacy that functions as a redress to over-choreographed modern DJing.

Her outsider approach is on show once again for RA.1000. Threaded together by strobe-lit DIY electronica, old-school acid house and corrosive machine funk that chews up the ear, the nearly two-hour set raises the bar once again.

In the sci-fi themed first half, Hauff drops two Cybotron tracks, nodding to Juan Atkins' blueprint for electro. You'll also hear "Riot" by Underground Resistance, the definitive mission statement for a world ablaze. This is musical anarchism, executed to the highest degree.

Find the tracklist and interview at ra.co/podcast/1017. Listen to all RA.1000 mixes, as well as the complete history of the RA Podcast, at https://1000.ra.co

RA.1000 Helena Hauff

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

Mister Sunday, Mister Saturday Night, Planetarium & Nowadays. NYC.

Ask A Beautiful Question

Eamon Harkin

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