2025

Recording from nitsa night on december 17th 2021

John Talabot dj set @Nitsa (17Dec21)

Helena Hauff (@helena-hauff) expertly curated DJ sets spanning acid, electro, techno, EBM, and post-punk. Her powerful drum beats collide with freely wandering melodies. Her sound is tailor-made for those who appreciate raw, yet restrained intensity, dragging the dance floor into a frosty abyss. Her debut album "A Tape" in 2015 garnered attention for its intricate manipulation of sound, where she meticulously arranges gritty and rough noises, filling in the gaps with rhythmic intricacies. Her other releases, "Discreet Desires" and the EP "Have You Been There, Have You Seen," experimentally layer and intertwine, with twisted waveforms akin to rusted artifacts, creating an unfriendly listening experience that compels bodily movement to escape Helena Hauff's auditory swamp. It evokes sounds from the Hague's western coast in the Netherlands—blending synthesized tones of Italo Disco with the gritty spirit of Detroit. Despite its unfriendliness, "Have You Been There, Have You Seen" still offers warmth and rhythmic service to dancers with tracks like "Nothing Is What I Know" and "Gift." This year, renowned dance label fabric Records recognized Helena Hauff's unique selections and released "fabric presents Helena Hauff," recreating the dance scenes she once fostered at the Golden Pudel club in Hamburg, Germany.

Gigging incessantly (and still lugging a heavy box of records across the world), Helena's reputation earned her an invitation to join the BBC Radio 1 Residency. She was the subject of cover features for Crack Magazine and DJ Mag, played headline sets at Sonar (b2b with Ben UFO) and Dekmantel, and at the end of 2017, Crack Magazine declared Helena "The Most Exciting DJ In The World (Right Now)" and her ballistic BBC Essential Mix was voted the best of 2017. With razor-sharp precision, her melodies redefine Electro/Techno, adhering to her signature cold and dark taste over the past decade, regardless of current musical trends. Utilizing turntables for minimalist yet forceful performances, she effortlessly navigates between peaks and troughs, even with the risk of needle skips, confidently rolling cigarettes as she cruises at high speeds between highs and lows, making her a unique and standout figure in the scene.

PURE Guest.055 Helena Hauff

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

Donato Dozzy - Mixato 16

Two hours of pure groove, recorded live from Nuits Sonores festival.

Download: https://bit.ly/XLR8Rpodcast_DaniloPlessow

Download

XLR8R Podcast 870: Danilo Plessow

Recording of Steffi's set at Dekmantel Ten

Pre-register for Dekmantel Festival 2025 here: bit.ly/4fyWKXc

Photo by David Muallem

Steffi at Dekmantel Ten

Aaron J B2B Oberman at Draaimolen Festival 2024

my live set from sustain release year 10 at the grove friday night. this was one of the wyldest vibes ive experienced while playing live and i hope you can feel the feral energy within and enjoy <3

xx

Sepehr (live) @ Sustain Release Year 10

Enter the wormhole with one of the techno artists we're most excited about in 2025.

Born in Osaka and now based in Tokyo, DJ MARIA. joins a decorated lineage of Japan's psychedelic elite, cut from a similarly explorative cloth as Wata Igarashi, Haruka and esoteric icons ¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U and DJ Nobu. This nerdy sanctum of deep techno is a notoriously hard world to break into: only the very best make the grade. DJ MARIA.'s head-spinning sets emphasise why she's already part of the club firmament at home, and is now in the midst of a global breakthrough.

Her trademark is tapestries of acid, trance and techno that strike a perfect balance between vibrancy, impact and restraint. She bit the bug through a teenage discovery of DVDs showing legendary psytrance raves like Solstice and Vision Quest, yet it wasn't until 2014 that she started DJing, balancing gigs with shifts at Tokyo's Face Records and, as of late, motherhood.

Today, as well as producing and touring venues such as FOLD and Bassiani, she helps run two boutique forest festivals—Moment and Transcendence—both of which play a big part in upholding Japan's storied techno tradition. DJ MARIA. has reached these heights principally because of her exceptional talent as a DJ, which is on full display on this week's RA Podcast.

The two-hour mix is pure manna for psychedelic techno heads, though we're confident the depth of feeling, subtle pacing and seamless stitching will lure in fans from across the electronic spectrum. RA.971 is a total treasure—the latest wow moment from an artist destined to have a career littered with them.

@djmaria-jp

Read more at ra.co/podcast/971

RA.971 DJ MARIA.

TRACKLIST

Syclops - New Bro's In NYC
Koreless - Seven (Drumhell)
Kreggo - Pheeroan
Rhyw - Calippo
Unknown Untitled - uu011 - a1
Marcel Dettmann - Cycling Bits
DJ Patrick R ft. MC KVN & DJ Pikeno MPC - Vai no Chão
Deft - It's Made of Shine
Andy Martin - Electric Blue
Pump Media Unlimited - Bobo 500
Identified Patient - My Way (Hilton Mix)
Harmon Eyes - Tension
DJ Doomscroll - Doomscroll
STEYA - Fast Life
Cirkle - Lunar Orbit
Dead Man’s Chest x King Kutlass - Ananda Tandava
Boris Noiz - Inceptive Point
E-Unity - E-Ternity
DE GRANDI - I Can Relate
Aulic Veil - A-V_001.2 (Bonus Track)
G Jones - Help! I Can't Find My Way Out
Meat Beat Manifesto - Into The Sun (Pts 1 / 2)
Dom & Roland - Interstellar Subs
CCL & Ciel - Spiral Drive (Objekt edit)
gyrofield - Occam's Razor
Shxcxchcxsh - DO 3
Uneak - Bless Dem
DJ Trace & HLZ - Raptor
DJ Phiene - Bass Fanactiks
Marco Maldarella - Buio Omega
solar-x - bionic man
Carrier - FATHOM
Stingray313 - Sentiment
Otto - Hazer
AceMo - Jungle Storm
Objekt - Ganzfeld (Djrum Remix - short edit)
CCL - Strange Attractor
Sonic - Taxi Driver
Instra:mental - Photograph

Objekt at Draaimolen Festival 2024

This is an hour live mix for dj nobu’s party named reprise, happening on 1.Feb at WOMB in Tokyo. 

Instead of focusing on new experiments, I put together some of my favorite tracks and ones I’ve been into recently. 

Hope you enjoy :)

Kugel - Live mix for Reprise [Jan.2025]

Kaleidoscopic psychedelia from one of Australia's finest.

While it might feel early to call bets on DJs of the decade, Kia Sydney, best known as Kia, is undoubtedly one of them. The Animalia founder began in Naarm's (Melbourne) underground scene in the mid-2010s, crediting a trip to the influential deep techno Japanese festival, Labyrinth, as the inspiration behind her sound.

Deep techno might not cut it as a descriptor for Sydney's sound, though. Hypnotic ribbons of steely techno mix with atmospherics and nimble grooves, drawing from IDM, dub and tech house, sharing as much with DJ Nobu and Donato Dozzy (try to find the track that overlaps with Dozzy's own RA Podcast) as well as modern practitioners like Priori and Beatrice M.

This distinctly Australian scuttling psychedelia has made Kia one of the most sought-after underground DJs globally. Her brainchild, Animalia, showcases a plurality of sounds and scenes, serving as living proof of the fruitful shift of the 2020s: less serious, perhaps, but with a sense of open-minded worldliness that offers a far more promising vision of what dance music can be and achieve.

Sydney's rare talent lies in forging connections, bringing people, sounds and ideas together with a distinct playfulness. Her RA Podcast showcases this alchemy in abundance, weaving classics like Monolake and Enya with peers such as OK EG, Cousin and Command D.

As she told us in her 2023 Breaking Through profile, "people tell me I have quite a distinctive sound but I can't tell so much because I hear so many different versions of it." RA.973 serves as confirmation that Kia's style is, to say the least, the mark of a generational talent.
 
@kia-sydney @animalia-label  @cirruslabel

Read more at ra.co/podcast/973

RA.973 Kia

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

Recorded on 7/25/25 4-5pm @ The Great Beyond Festival, Meta Ta Physika Stage

w/ Intellephunk + Enemy Records
thank you <3

DJ Sphinx @ The Great Beyond 2025

@blind-observatory – Live at SPROCKI 2025
Recorded Saturday, 5th July 2025
Outdoor Stage Afternoon Set · Feldberger Seenlandschaft, Germany

A cinematic and immersive excursion from one of Berlin’s most distinctive selectors. Blind Observatory guided the Saturday crowd through expansive techno landscapes and cosmic textures. A precise and powerful dream'n'space journey that carried the outdoor stage from late afternoon into the golden hour.

blind observatory @ sprocki festival 2025

The full 3,5 hour Colorfloor set by @oooccaaa at Ratherlost Easter 2025 in Lofi, Amsterdam. A spinge-tingling closing ceremony fuelled by psychedelic propulsions.

Occa at Ratherlost Easter 2025

Acid and electro from the docks of Hamburg.

RA.978 Sandwell District

Resident Advisor

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