Smooth Arrangements

The German minimal DJ returns to the spotlight with two hours of artfully subtle house and techno.

There's an old German proverb that goes "Der stete Tropfen höhlt den Stein." Literally, it means a constant dripping wears away the stone, but the point isn't about force but patience: slow, steady repetition can leave the deepest mark. It's an apt metaphor for the career of Kosta Athanassiadis, better known as XDB.

Active since the early '90s, first as a DJ and then producer by the decade's end, Athanassiadis has built a career less on hype than persistence. His catalogue spans labels like Dial, Metrolux and Echocord, alongside a steady trickle of EPs and remixes that have quietly cemented his reputation as one of minimal house and techno's undersung heroes.

That patience carries into his sound and production ethos. Where many of his peers embraced software upgrades and new workflows, Athanassiadis has long stuck to Cubase, a handful of trusty instruments and 30-year-old speakers he claims to have run "hundreds of thousands of tunes" through. He also still prefers to use inexpensive, straightforward gear—what matters, he insists, is not the tools but the feel. The result is a sound that’s stripped back, direct and enduring.

Lately, Athanassiadis has found himself back in focus. With minimal enjoying fresh attention, his calendar has filled, and with it a run of back-to-back sets—most often alongside PLO Man, a regular sparring partner this year. True to form, though, you won't find that his style has changed much. Over 30 years after his first gig, you can rest assured you'll still find him playing with patience, carving out long arcs rather than sharp peaks.

His RA Mix captures him in a reflective mood. Running just over two hours, RA.1003 is a hushed yet absorbing affair, moving seamlessly from the delicate atmospherics of Valentino Mora and Caldera to the machine funk of Robert Hood, Solid Gold Playaz and Marcellus Pittman. There are left turns folded into XDB's patient narrative arc, too: John Carpenter's brooding scores here, DJ Sprinkles' melancholic work with Will Long on "Acid Trax N (Acid Dog)" there.

It's the sound of a DJ who has been quietly chiseling away for three decades, and who understands the value of persistence as much as restraint.

@xdb

Find the tracklist and interview at ra.co/podcast/1021

RA.1003 XDB

Sultry low-end grooves from a rising house enchantress.

"What kind of music do I actually want to play?" Every artist asks themselves this at some point in their career. What is a sound? And why do we personally identify with it? For Lea Lang, AKA dj sweet6teen, this question is the guiding force behind her RA Mix.

Born in Aachen, a German spa city close to the border with Belgium, Lang found her musical feet in the vibrant student hub of Cologne. It was while studying social work at the Technische Hochschule that she fell into the nightlife scene. 

Finding her sound wasn't an instant process. Lang cut her teeth on breaks-heavy house and prog (think Angel D'Lite), traces of which you can hear peppered across RA.1004. But as she explains in this week's Q&A, the pandemic years were, musically, a turning point. 

"High BPMs and short-lived trends became very dominant and I realised I couldn't stand the pace anymore," she writes. "That's when my sound naturally shifted into something more minimalist and timeless."

Nowadays, you'll find Lang in Berlin during the week, and on weekends… well, take your pick. A busy touring schedule means she's on the road almost constantly —this summer she's debuted at Horst Arts & Music, Butik, Dimensions and Panorama Bar (to name just a few). 

And her RA Mix? It oozes charm from the jump. Buoyant with gyrating low-end, it's hard to think her sound was ever anything else: vocals twirl around analogue basslines, material à la Eddie Richards and Terry Francis's historic Wiggle parties, as well as the kind of bongo action that wouldn't feel out of place in an Apollonia session. Call it waft, wiggle, smooch house—whatever it is, we like it.

@djsweet6teen 
Find the tracklist and interview at https://ra.co/podcast/1022

RA.1004 dj sweet6teen

Stream/Download

Dr Feel Right

A rare mix from the critically acclaimed experimentalist.

Lucrecia Dalt isn't your typical electronic artist. The Colombian singer and composer approaches music-making in the way a fantasy writer builds worlds. Over the past two decades, she's produced a catalogue that reads more like a bookshelf of strange, interlinked novels, each with its own laws, characters and textures, extending the one before it.

Dalt's <i>RA Mix</i> is a fascinating entry into the series (and will sit comfortably with <i> RA's</i> recent archival playlist, <a href="https://1000.ra.co/playlists" target="_blank">Mixes From Artists Who Don't Call Themselves DJs, But Probably Should</a>). Take the opening track, "Cellophane," by Beak>, the band led by Portishead's Geoff Barrow. The lyrics set the tone for the hour to come: "Now the wind has blown down / Now the truth is laid out there." 

True to Dalt's oeuvre, RA.1005 has little regard for convention. Kick drums and beatmatching are nowhere to be heard; instead, she offers a collage of inspiration, drawing connections across eras, moods and geographies. 

The mix includes the work of close collaborators (David Sylvian, Juana Molina and Niño de Elche) as well as excursions into psychedelic jazz (Lloyd's Miller's "Gol-E-Gandom"), sombre downtempo (Muslimgauze's "Enchante, Monsieur") and Korean pop (Leenalchi's "Magic Pocket). Spanning just over an hour, it unfolds like another chapter in Dalt's ongoing project of world-building through sound. 

@lucreciadalt
Find the tracklist and interview at https://ra.co/podcast/1023

RA.1005 Lucrecia Dalt

Three hours of incendiary techno, as two veterans go head-to-head.

When Speedy J described his studio dynamic with Chris Liebing back in 2014, he put it bluntly: "I try to piss him off a little." The result? Dance music that's as functional and precise as Liebing demands, with just enough chaos to keep it interesting. That tension has defined the duo's partnership, Collabs 3000, since their first releases, and it's alive and well on their debut RA Mix. 

Both artists are techno heavyweights in their own right. Jochem Paap, AKA Speedy J, helped Europe slow down after the breakneck '90s, proving that techno could chug as well as pummel. Liebing, meanwhile, commanded his popular label CLR and went from transforming schranz into the hard techno sound that recently swept up a younger generation of ravers. 

As a pair, Collabs 3000 undeniably has its ear trained on the big room. Paap and Liebing are both former Berghain regulars, and the Berlin club's influence is clear across RA.1006: taut, muscular techno, or "effective and structured" in Liebing's words, with Paap injecting the right amount of unpredictability. Their 2005 full-length, Metalism, remains a landmark: polished, uncompromising and dynamite for any large sound system. 

With the album now remastered for its 20th anniversary, Collabs 3000's RA Mix brings that same ferocious energy into sharp focus: smouldering textures, peak-time pressure and three unrelenting hours of classic techno.

@chris-liebing
@jochempaap
Read the interview at ra.co/podcast/1025

RA.1006 Collabs 3000

Has the techno industry failed Palestine?

Sama', the world's most famous Palestinian DJ, talks about Israel’s genocide in Gaza and how the music industry—and some of her peers in techno—have failed Palestine.

The most deeply divisive topic of the year is undoubtedly Israel's genocide in Gaza. The issue has prompted some artists to step boldly into the political ring and others to shield their professional identities from scrutiny and public discourse, with each camp drawing fierce backlash.

After a brief summer hiatus, the RA Exchange returns with a new season, launching with Palestinian DJ Sama’ Abdulhadi, who addresses all this and more in a charged interview. The Ramallah-born artist has since gone on to tour non-stop internationally, regularly appearing alongside some of her idols growing up, such as Richie Hawtin and Nicole Moudaber. She's also no stranger to RA: in 2023, she graced the cover of this magazine and, just this summer, contributed to our drop of RA.1000 anniversary mixes.

This interview, though, is the most outspoken Abdulhadi has ever been. She shares her take on what's happened since October 7th, including her assessment of how and where the music industry, and her peers, have fallen short; the pressure she feels to be a global spokesperson for Palestine; why she feels that the revolutionary spirit has drained from a subculture built from resistance; and how, despite it all, she retains a sense of optimism and forward momentum. Listen or watch the episode in full. -Chloe Lula

EX.777 Sama’ Abdulhadi

The gifted London DJ and curator goes big on bass futurism.

"To pull a thread." This old English adage means to follow a small detail that might unravel into something larger and more significant. It's also the inspiration behind London artist mi-el's NTS Radio show, and a neat way of understanding her approach as a DJ. 

Take mi-el's rich archive of mixes. From NTS to The Trilogy Tapes, they show her to be a deeply personal selector and curator, pushing past functionality into something more expressive, narrative and often political. A show about Refugee Week? Afrofuturist world-making? Interlocking systems of domination? All material is putty in her hands. 

Now based in Berlin, mi-el is simply a wicked club DJ. In just a few years she's played Panorama Bar, De School and FOLD, as well as festivals including Waking Life, Terraforma and Field Maneuvers. 

Alongside peers and predecessors like Josey Rebelle, she represents a new generation of Black British artists reinventing the wheel, and as we mark the beginning of UK Black History Month, no other candidate felt more fitting. 
 
RA.1007 shows why. The 55-minute session is a deft balancing act of depth and playfulness, humour and heaviness, rooted in club intensity and the futurism of the UK hardcore continuum. It's firm confirmation that, in mi-el's hands, the art of the DJ mix is alive and well.

@miellllllll
Find the tracklist and interview at ra.co/podcast/1026

RA.1007 mi-el

Josh Baker - Human Touch [demo]

LOWKEY - KEEP ON RUNNING

🎶House producer
⚡️ Keep on Running out now!

LOWKEY - KEEP ON RUNNING

LowKey

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