Back in the day, drums were used as signals for festivities and war because their sounds travelled the furthest. Azu Tiwaline has long understood that. A master in the dark arts of percussion, she makes deep and profound percussive music that seems to communicate forgotten rituals from centuries past. Her sound is dense, as if pulled from the depths of the Sahara desert in Tunisia, yet still feels spacious thanks to polyrhythmic contortions and sparse, elegant melodies.

Her productions largely fall into the confines of percussive techno, but unlike the genre's springier variants, her dubby textures and psychedelic rhythms command seriousness and move with immensity. Her Livity Sound debut, the Magnetic Service EP from 2020, connected Amazigh music with dub and techno and is a masterclass in restraint and hypnosis. Her latest release, The Fifth Dream, continues to showcase her skills in balancing light and dark tones using field recordings from her home in Tunisia's El Djerid desert, minimal ambient techno and haunting notes.

Mirroring her discography, this RA Podcast features plenty of twisted rhythms, trippy techno and straightforward club cuts. Created for movement rather than hypnosis, these selections show off a different side of her drum palette—perky breaks and syncopated kicks—wrapped in her usual weighty atmospheres.

@azu-tiwaline

Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/906

RA podcast

RA.906 Azu Tiwaline

All time favourite Aurora Halal @itsallhalal warming up for D-Dan 12th December 2022 11.00-1.30am at NYC's legendary Nowadays.

ani/live Thirty Three: Aurora Halal @ Nowadays

"The lights went off and we decided to start."
We are deeply excited to share Donato and Marco’s grand finale for the last edition of Terraforma at Villa Arconati. With great humbleness, these two masters and dear friends have carefully broadened and lulled, record after record, an intimate space of trust, exchange and deep-time connection. 
 
Also, we’d like to add a fond memory that was shared with us a few days after:

“Dozzy and Shuttle’s finale unfolded like twilight. A prolonged dusk caressed by an eerie drizzle. Shadows and whispers echoing with the surroundings. Synapses slowly reaching the ground, merging and becoming one with the underground rhizomatic networks. A memorable rendez-Nous within a fractal space. It felt like being at the core center of the matrix, enveloped by a warmth reminiscent of a maternal womb. I found myself in a weightless suspension, envisioning the past, the present and the future, all together in a blink of an eye.”

We are fueled by gratitude for all this beauty.

Terraforma Grand Finale w/ Donato Dozzy b2b Marco Shuttle

Priori (@priori-ties) has always explored a wide range of techno from dense and introspective to more joyous, often against the backdrop of technological possibilities. He hails from Canada and has been prolific since first emerging with two full-lengths to his name on his own NAFF label. They pair dubby undercurrents with crystalline melodies and contain the sort of unresolved tensions that keep you locked in for the ride. This weekend he plays Dekmantel Naarm 2024 but first has served up this new mi for us.

Priori says this is the first dance mix he's done in a long time, adding "It's an hour and a half of fresh rhythms and rave sounds that I recorded while on tour in Australia. It features a few tracks I have been playing a lot lately and some forthcoming bits by myself and some friends." In just over 90 minutes he works through a rollercoaster of deep techno rhythms that are firmly focused on the future and flow as fluidly as water.

Dekmantel Podcast

Dekmantel Podcast 459 - Priori

Djset by @donato-dozzy recorderd live at Ivreatronic party 5.5.24 - Bunker (Torino-Italy)

Donato Dozzy - Mixato 16

Konduku (@kondukukonduku) is Dutch-born but with a proud Turkish heritage that colours the music he makes. It's impactful techno but with curious time signatures and minimalist percussive that draws on the rhythms of his ancestral homeland. As the son of a musician and Balkan folklore dancer, he was always set to spend his life in music and so far it's been a rich one that has included a standout debut album on Nous’klaer in 2018 and fresh EPs on the cult likes of Delsin, Bitta and Spazio Disponibile.

This week's mix showcases exactly what he is all about with 80 minutes of supple and subversive techno. Liquid tracks from Jeff Mills, Donato Dozzy, Shackleton and plenty of his own all feature in this timeless trip where slick transitions and carefully threaded grooves constantly build mood and atmosphere. From deep and cosmic to dark and dystopian, there is an always underlying tension that keeps both mind and body utterly locked in.

Dekmantel Podcast 472 - Konduku

Living, breathing, banging techno from an artist defining the highly-textured new frontier of the sound in 2024.

Lindsey Wang, AKA Polygonia, has an amorphous style you could call organic—or, better yet, harmonious. She interweaves unfamiliar elements with a mercurial touch. Wang can make something completely otherworldly sound totally, well, natural. It's made her a fixture everywhere from Munich's BLITZ to major festivals like Sustain-Release and Draaimolen.

Unsurprisingly, Wang is not one to be pinned down. Be it the sound design-anchored side project Lyder, her own label QEONE, or co-producing an album's worth of experimental percussion alongside jazz drummer Simon Popp, it's fair to say her personal output matches the feverish energy of her mixes. There's multidisciplinary, and then there's Wang: Poly-disciplinary, you might say.

Wang's entry into the RA Podcast series is no different, another stellar emphasis of her artistry. RA.955 is a voyage into wild variations of texture, rhythm and feeling, guided along by the principle of endless metamorphosis. Supple driving grooves meet crinkled surfaces, scuttling hi-hats meet chattering sonics, and good luck keeping hold of a consistent drum pattern for long. Behold a living organism raised by the club and the great outdoors in equal measure.

@polygonia

Read more at ra.co/podcast/955

RA Podcast

RA.955 Polygonia

Regis and Function's first mix in over 10 years is a unique paean to Silent Servant, heavy on unreleased material.

When it came time for RA to compile our Albums of the 2010s, one record with a tauntingly limited availability of 500 copies was never in doubt: Sandwell District's era-defining 'Feed-Forward'. Encompassing Karl O'Connor (Regis), Peter Sutton (Female), David Sumner (Function) and Juan Mendez (Silent Servant), Sandwell District had the underground in a vice grip for over a decade.

The collective imploded in 2013, with Sumner and O'Connor's relationship appearing beyond repair. And yet, an unlikely second phase is here, featuring imminent comeback LP 'End Beginnings' and their return to the RA Podcast after 16 years. In 2023, the trio of Function, Regis and Silent Servant had been performing and laying down new material before the latter's shock death last January. It's in the shadow of loss that this unique mix was forged.

Founded in 2002 as a spiritual sister to seminal Downwards, Sandwell truly began to hit its straps in the late '00s, as shadow-stalking cuts sliced through clubland orthodoxy like a switchblade. In parallel, the label's artwork—a noir recombination of Burroughs cut-ups, DIY zines and arthouse amour that Silent Servant made his own—helped fortify a movement which placed an aesthetic premium on grit, grain and sadism.

By the early 2010s, this fixation on the dark arts had utterly permeated the mood inside techno's masonic temples. Labels like Blackest Ever Black, Stroboscopic Artefacts, Avian and Modern Love were in their pomp, razorwire legends like Severed Heads and Chris & Cosey benefited from second winds, and it was briefly a jailable offence to not have a press photo in black and white. 'Feed-Forward' was the exceptional coronating statement.

RA.978 features a stack of unheard recordings from each of the trio, as well as close allies Stefanie Parnow and Tropic of Cancer, while also gathering many of Silent Servant's all-time favourite songs, including Psychic TV, Grace Jones and Galaxie 500. It's a strikingly vulnerable listen, one without many parallels on the Podcast. We're glad to run it. – Gabriel Szatan

Read more and find the tracklist here: ra.co/podcast/978
Read our new feature with Sandwell District here: https://ra.co/features/4426

RA.978 Sandwell District

Ciao tutti 💖
So happy to share the recording from my last set at Open Ground from December 2024. 

It was an emotional journey ~ I wanted to tell a story of diving into underwater dream lands, where spirit guides and glitchy creatures meet and send us messages from the other side... where sound takes over the brain and opens something in the heart and body.
I waved through many genres ~ ambient, jungle, electro, dubstep, drill, jazz, techno and the wonky in-between. It felt like I had the chance to express a fuller spectrum of who I am as a music lover. 🙏

That night, I had the honour of opening for the legend Surgeon ~ someone who’s deeply inspired my path since the very beginning. Sharing that moment with him and connecting was just wow. 🥹

Open Ground truly is one of the most special places on earth ~ the care, the sound, the freedom, the community, the crew… just perfection. 

So grateful to be invited back this saturday ! (26.07.2025) 
Don’t skip ~ come sweat and feel with us 🌀💎💦

~ with love & gratitude ~ 
GiGi🧜‍♀️

GiGi FM at Freifeld / Open Ground 14.12.2024

The Bunker Podcast 235 comes from @erikluebs. This is a live set recorded in Milan on March 28 at the party Acquario.

Erik Luebs is a US-born musician and sound designer based in Japan. Eschewing typical genre tropes, Luebs approaches techno with a playfully disruptive technique, reinterpreting the fundamentals using built-from-scratch patches and labyrinthine sequencing. While the labor-intensive process is inspired by a wide range of luminaries such as Mark Fell and Rrose, the resulting music is firmly tied to the dance floor.

Luebs released an EP on The Bunker back in 2021, and has since released on DJ Nobu’s Bitta label (@djnobu_bitta), and @nousklaeraudio. He also has an upcoming release on the legendary @kompakt imprint.

Erik will be playing an ambisonic surround sound set for a horizontal audience at Going In at Reforestor’s Laboratory in Brooklyn this Friday, and an extended sunrise dancefloor set at The Bunker’s takeover of @nowadaysnyc Nonstop on Sunday morning.

RA.978 Sandwell District

Resident Advisor