based in Berlin

Music for Parents

Dad Is Painting Again

Ether

The Ring Orchestra is an eight-person effort, a collective coming together to tackle opera and one of the genre’s controversial poster boys. In 18 compositions, the artists Born in Flamez, Gil Schneider, Simonne Jones, Leo Luchini, Legion Seven, P.A. Hülsenbeck, Isa GT, and Ixa create a collaborative musical score that uses Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen as the point of departure. Far from being an affirmative tribute, the orchestra sets out to deconstruct and break down what Wagner and his opus magnum represent: collaboration over singularity and openness instead of conservative rigidity. The resulting score doesn’t shy away from ambivalence by decentralizing authorship and encompassing everything from ambient to pop, reggaeton, and a wider variety of non-western musical influences. In addition to the musical material, the double LP contains a text that reflects on the project, its genesis, and significance. Thoughts and elaborations by the eight contributors are collaged with the help of an artificial intelligence, resulting in the dissolution of singular voices or opinions and further questioning the notion of the “genius.”

The Ring Orchestra came together to create the music for a staging of Der Ring des Nibelungen at Schauspielhaus Zürich, directed by Christopher Rüping and written by Necati Öziri. They, meaning everyone involved, ventured out to “correct” Wagner’s monster, full of otherworldly music and deep-seated hatred, full of fervent storms of love and hardcore racism, full of a deep reverence for nature and for Darwin’s blood ideology. The musicians Black Cracker and Jonas Holle assembled an orchestra of independent musicians, countering Wagner’s one-man show with a polyphonic work that became something bigger than the sum of its parts. 

—

Written, recorded, and produced by: Born in Flamez, Gil Schneider, Simonne Jones, Leo Luchini, Legion Seven, P.A. Hülsenbeck, Isa GT, and Ixa
Graphic Design: Pascal Alexander for Studio Laurenz Brunner
Project Managers: Born in Flamez, P.A. Hülsenbeck, Black Cracker
Text Concept: Legion Seven
Mastering: Jonas Holle
Editor: Mathis Neuhaus

Leo Luchini – Non-Western Valkyries Theme

Ecstatic Computation

Fantas

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

New York trio Purelink give us an exclusive peek of what they have planned for the upcoming summer live music season in this weekend’s Sunday Mix. As the creators of Signs, one of the best ambient and dub techno albums of last year, their 80-minute mix shows off their advanced ears for soundscapes and texture, while adding on head-nodding grooves and dubby four-to-the-floor beats.

It’s as dancefloor suitable as it is Sunday sofa ready. “This new year has mostly been spent in our studio prepping new music and live set ideas,” they say. “A lot of these songs reflect the dancier side we’ve been inspired by lately. Hope to see you on a dancefloor soon.”

Sunday Mix: Purelink

Tracklist here: http://www.mixesdb.com/w/2015-01-02_-_Floating_Points_%26_Four_Tet_@_Plastic_People_Closing_Party,_London

Over the past 8 years or so we have had, along with Theo Parrish, the honour of playing the monthly residencies at a small basement club in Shoreditch, London with an impeccable sound system. After 20 years of operation, it was time to move on and close the doors on a place that has a lot to answer for in shaping modern club culture. To say this space along with the owner Ade’s singular vision was fundamental in our personal musical formation would be a complete understatement. 
 
On the day of their closing, manager Charlotte asked us if we’d put the system through its paces for the last time that the club would be open to the public. We set about packing the anthems from our respective residencies and on the night once the people were through the doors played 2 records in turn for the rest of the dance. We included tracks of our own and of friends that were made with that place in mind. Records like Daphni - Ye Ye and Four Tet - Pinnacles were made to first be played at Kieran’s nights there, and the Floating Points - Vacuum EP was born out of the CD-R night at the club, and its launch party was the trigger for Sam’s monthly residency.
 
We set this recording up just before the start of the night and unfortunately it distorts in places, but we make no apology for how joyfully noisy people get! The vibe in the room this night was typical of the club on any given night and we hope this recording captures just a fraction of the spirit of a Plastic People night.
 
A massive thank you from us to everyone that has come down to the nights over the years and supported our music there. We are truly humbled to have shared the music we love with people at this place, and your energy in turn has influenced the way we make music on an unfathomable scale. We also thank the bosses Charlotte Kepel and Ade Fakile for inviting us to the club and having faith in us over  these years! All the best for the future!
 
 
See you in the dance
 
Much Love 
 
Sam &amp; Kieran

Floating Points & Four Tet - Final Plastic People 2 1 2015

Recording of CCL & Objekt's set at Dekmantel Selectors 2024.

CCL & Objekt at Dekmantel Selectors 2024

Final hour: zweikommasieben DJs lead us into the night.

zweikommasieben DJs [06.05.25]

We’re closing out OOW season with Dane//Close at the helm

Dane//Close [06.06.25]

I remember my first encounter with Dominik very well. For some reason, I was driving three quarters of the band All Xs, in which Dominik was playing drums at the time, through the city, and I remember thinking to myself during the drive that Dominik was a very funny person. Since then, we have become friends, and I have learned that Dominik is also a vital force in Lucerne's music and cultural scene. As a drummer in various bands, as a contributor to the cultural magazine 041, and as an incredibly loyal and enthusiastic fan. 
But let's hear from Dominik what episode 50 is all about.
XXX
LOOD

Good things take time: Perhaps this personal mix just needed the summer holidays to come together – and the lovely folks at Light Of Other Days gave me the space and time to do it.
These tracks might not drip with summer vibes, but the sense of calm and relaxation that comes with each passing day is definitely in there: doomy ambient, grime, dub, folk, RnB, rap, some guitar strumming and a British all-time.

LOODcast 50 ~ Dominik Bienz

Recorded at Kaffee Kind, Lucerne by @kind&kegelbahnaudio

MUD: Heidi Hurni und DJ 1901 @ Kaffee Kind, 250608

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 (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.

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.⁠ – 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

* Subscribe for more premieres: http://bit.ly/2igyosu
* Read more: https://boltingbits.com/king-softy-pump-capacitor-index-records
* Exclusive video on Youtube: https://youtu.be/Als4WypZVrk
* Pre-order: https://indexrecords.bandcamp.com/album/index-vol-3

INDEX:Records, a new label of far-flung, left-field electronic experimentation and wizardry, are releasing their latest various-artists compilation, “INDEX: Vol. 3” on November 4th. We at Bolting Bits would like to take the opportunity to invite you to a virtual release listening-party happening on Thursday, October 29th at 4:00pm EDT, hosted by INDEX on Facebook Live. The link to the event with more information is posted below. 

With the fifth track on INDEX:Records’ compilation, King Softy’s “Pump Capacitor” brings a slice of harsh, corrosive abstract electronic in the same vein as Objekt. The obscure Berlin-based artist has yet to release an EP, but if this track is any indication, his sound is fully formed and ready to be deployed in a longer format. 

The opening sub-bass of the track is deep and all-encompassing, making way for an onslaught of stripped-down, mutated drum-n-bass percussion, alien-like synth effects, and a heavily-distorted vocal clip. Softy takes the bare-bones structure of a drum-n-bass song and stretches it to its most extreme permutations until what is left is hardly recognizable, but at the same, completely engrossing. Despite its exercise in experimental electronic acrobatics, the song maintains a robust structure, circling back to its central beat with the same menacing and stealthy energy of an Anaconda wrapping its way around a lifeless victim.

The song gradually loosens its muscular grip, shedding layers of sonic distortion and contorted noise before once again revealing that skeletal drum pattern and ephemeral ambiance. Across four minutes, Softy displays an impressive array of hard-edged, mind-melting sonic tricks that feel right at home on this outre compilation.

PREMIERE: King Softy - Pump Capacitor

Muscle Memory

Let Me Thru

Präsens Editionen was founded in 2011 to give home to zweikommasieben Magazin. Ever since a bunch of magazines, books, zines, records, tapes and oddities have been published.

zweikommasieben is a Swiss magazine that has been devoted to the documentation of contemporary music and sounds since the summer of 2011. The magazine features artist interviews, essays and columns as well as photography, illustration and graphics. In addition zweikommasieben curates and organizes a variety of events—for example Ebbing Sounds, a symposium that initially was held in the summer of 2018 in San Francisco, or the biennial London-based festival Oto Nove Swiss.

Leo Luchini – Non-Western Valkyries Theme

Präsens Editionen

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