UNFOLD LVI (02/07/2023)

Liverec Unfold / @foldldn 29.10.2023 ⋆˚🐾˖°

✩ Tracks: @clairesaccessories40k @aeryeen @disgrays @matriarkcph @ecg-moir @a_strange_wedding @korl @sirenik @spiderwrap @vergil909 @djhauge129 @astralbandit @urtrax

olesia ✦ Unfold LXIII closing set ✦ 29.10.2023

Live recording of Dj set - opening back up the grove stage 8pm-10pm on the 2nd night. Thank u SR team x

https://soundcloud.com/secondcousins

Cousin @ Sustain Release Year 10

Fantastic Planet Riff (21.4.25)

UNFOLD feat. Ryan Ashworth - 11 July 2025

UNFOLD CIII - MAIN ROOM CLOSING (06/07/2025)

Part four of RA.999: the sound of shared history, courtesy of two legends of minimal house in full flow.

A lot can happen in 20 years. Especially in dance music, where movements rise, collide and dissolve at dizzying speed. It takes conviction, dynamism and a formidable record collection to stay the course.

That’s why Margaret Dygas and Sonja Moonear have remained such enduring underground favourites. Step into one of their sets, solo or side by side, and an assured calm takes over the floor. You're in the sleekest, safest hands imaginable.

Recorded live at fabric's 25th birthday, their RA.999 captures that feeling perfectly. High-tempo, irresistibly groovy and full of quiet authority, it marks a return to the series for both: Moonear with RA.520, and Dygas with the fourth-ever RA Podcast all the way back in 2006.

They also gave rare interviews, reflecting on a deep musical connection that began in 2007, the legacy of minimal and lessons from a life spent in DJ booths the world over. 

"I felt excited and lucky to be invited so early in what I now see as a much longer journey," wrote Dygas. "Music holds memories in its frequencies, and the right track can transport you instantly to a past version of yourself. That’s powerful. That’s the kind of power I respect." Amen.

@moonear
@margaret

Read the full interview at ra.co/podcast/1008

RA.999 Sonja Moonear & Margaret Dygas

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 1000.ra.co.

RA.1000 Mark Ernestus

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 1000.ra.co.

RA.1000 Terre Thaemlitz (AKA DJ Sprinkles)

Andrew Weatherall's first official posthumous mix. The only b2b DJ Harvey ever agreed to. Six hours at Trouw. Full send — this one's special.

Gabriel Szatan, Editor (RA): 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, chronicling a moment when the resting heart rate of dance floors plunged lower than potentially any comparable point in the 21st century. A masterclass, and 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 a racecar.

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. We sought to render an accurate picture of DJ culture in 2025 for the longhaul.

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.⁠

@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 1000.ra.co

Fantastic Planet Riff (21.4.25)

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