RA Mix

Name: Alicia Greco
Alias: Leesh (@dj_leesh)
Pronouns: they/them
Location: Chicago

Influences: Flowers, prisms, the sun and moon and stars and planets, addiction and recovery, kung fu, interconnection, acceptance, love.
 
Affiliations/Residencies/Projects: Daisychain

Favorite Quote: “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” 

Advice for the DJs, producers and artists of our community:
You are good enough. Your voice is important. Do not let anyone put you beneath them, and if they try to - use your FORWARD ENERGY. When the punches get more intense, relax harder. Breathe. Keep going. You’ll get stuck sometimes, and then you’ll keep going. Things will change, and you will keep going. 

There is not something deeply broken inside of you. We all have parts of us that are hurt and need healing, but the core of you is not broken. The core of you is beautiful and whole. And that beauty can be found. Listen to your inner voice, speak kindly to yourself. Healing is not linear. When you feel the urge to isolate, reach out. It is OKAY to ask for help. Learn what form of self-care works for you at any given moment. You deserve to love and be loved.

Imposter syndrome happens to all of us. But all of those minutes you spend questioning your sound, your message, your decisions, your selection, your transitions - all of those minutes you spend questioning and judging YOU - enough time will pass and you’ll look back or listen back and you’ll be proud of who you are and what you made. The mistakes that felt blinding will fade. You’re still going to sweat about it, just try not to sweat too much because it will keep you from enjoying the moment. You are not a machine! You are a human! 

Fuck the system. Use that DIY energy to create the space you long for but don’t go it alone. Find others, build something, do it together. Play the game if you wish, but remember you also don’t have to. You can forge your own path, one that’s less trodden. It will be hard and you will have doubts but if you keep going, you will find authenticity. It’s never too late.

Know yourself. Learn to love yourself. 

About the mix: In all of these years, I myself have never made a Daisychain mix. Now, here it is. Talk about daunting pressure! But with these ideas of time, transition and change, I did a retrospective to create this concept: my sonic journey through Daisychain. I went back and listened to all of my old mixes to select tracks that were of utmost significance to me during this span of time. I wrote down 125 tracks on 125 post-its that took over the walls of my dining room. I somehow narrowed it down. [Continued on website]

With this mix Leesh asks for you to please learn more about and consider donating to:

❁ Dogs Matter: An organization that provides temporary foster service for folks going into rehab for alcoholism and addiction. (https://www.dogsmatter2.org/)

❁ FreeFrom: This LA-based organization was created to help survivors of domestic violence achieve financial security and help to dismantle the systemic economic structures that perpetuate the violence. As a survivor myself, this organization is doing something incredible and I truly believe in it.(https://www.freefrom.org/)

❁ Beagle Freedom Project: Beagles are the most used dogs for experimental testing due to their kind and trusting nature and temperament. BFP rescues and rehomes beagles from these labs to provide for them a better, safer life. If you know me, you know Yahtzee. He's the rescued beagle baby angel of my life. Rescue the beagles! (https://bfp.org/)

Read more - https://thedaisychain.club/2025/01/16/daisychain-360-leesh/

A goodbye (for now) letter - https://thedaisychain.club/2025/01/16/a-letter-an-end-a-new-beginning/

Daisychain

Daisychain 360 - Leesh

72번째 vurt podcast는 스웨덴 스톡홀름을 중심으로 활동하고 있는 테크노 아티스트 Jessie Granqvist의 68분 세트와 함께 합니다.

스웨덴 전자음악 레이블 Northern Electronics의 소속 아티스트로서 지난 10여년간 스톡홀름 테크노 씬의 주요 인물로 활동해온 Jessie는 깊은 음악적 문화에 대한 연결성을 지닌 놀랍고 다재다능한 DJ이다. 그녀는 언제나 진보적인 비전과 사운드의 아름다움을 포용하여 깊은 최면적 여행을 선사한다. 수년 동안 최고의 테크노 및 일렉트로닉 음악 아티스트들과 함께 연주해온 그녀는 조지아의 Khidi나 베를린의 Tresor 같은 클럽의 단골손님이며, 스톡홀름 씬에서 수년간 레퍼런스 아티스트 중 한 명으로 활약하고 있다.

https://soundcloud.com/jessiegranqvist
https://www.instagram.com/jessiegranqvist/

Staple figure of the Swedish scene for more than a decade, Jessie is a remarkable and versatile DJ with a deep musical culture and a true connection to the sound, always embracing progression and beauty in sound to provide truly hypnotising journeys. Having played with many of the best techno and electronic music artists of our scene over the years, she is a regular at clubs like Khidi in Georgia or Tresor in Berlin alongside being one of the reference artists in the Stockholm scene for many years.

vurt podcast 72 - Jessie Granqvist

Our own @raleigh-harmony hadn’t done a solo closing on Harmony since 2017, we were keen on putting him to the test again after such a break.
By the time he started, @ankali has already been fully engaged after the energetic, self-confident performances from Dash, Zeynep, D. Tiffany, and Ayu’s cutting-edge live set that we posted a couple weeks ago.
Throughout the night—which maintained a steady progressive, adequately trancey vibe—Raleigh added a slight mental twist to it before everyone headed off to join their loved ones around the Christmas tree.

Enjoy the first two hours of the recording and await his forthcoming EP on Harmony Rec in the spring.

Harmony Rec.ordings | Raleigh @ Ankali label night "closing set" [extract]

Ahead of Amniote Editions’ 5 year anniversary night at Bassiani on the 6th of December (cancelled due to street protests) comes a very special mix from Munich’s finest, BASHKKA. Derived from the Turkish word for ‘different’ (she has roots there), the name reflects a no f*cks given approach to sound and culture that draws people toward her like moth to flame. From formative days in New York City where she started taking inspiration from its wealth of queer histories, she carved an insubordinate sound that’s crossed the Atlantic and set up shop in her native Germany, where her liberating tunes have found common cause with such venues as Blitz Club, Panorama Bar and Amsterdam’s Raum just a hop and a skip across the border. The aim is to reclaim spaces, assert the existence of marginalised groups (SWANA people like herself for one), amplify their narratives and create moments’ where ‘individual heartbeats merge into one motherbeat’. Further to those activist visions, her debut EP Maktub (2023) was a five-track banger and labour of love that synthesised Kurdish vocal samples with runaway beats. The reference to overlooked perspectives and elusive spark found at the intersection of culture and sound is the driving force, and something that’s felt in the gut when she plays. It’s a much needed energy in turbulent times, a reminder that you can save the world and have fun doing it. For Bassiani Podcast 242, BASHKKA brings her inimitable rhythms to the fore of the counter-cultural struggle: brazen and rave-ready, a two-hour trip to the future, slamming beats from a true icon.

@bashkka

Bassiani invites BASHKKA / Podcast #242

International, Dutch and Amsterdam Legend Tom Trago with this weeks IsBurning mix. 

Two decades into his winding voyage through music, culture and creativity, a producer, DJ, label owner, collaborator, remixer, radio host and DJ’s DJ who is renowned not only for his impressive productivity, but also the genuine depth and variety of his work. Tom’s last performance is still fresh in our memories it was a 4hour  b2b  with our own Carlos, both good friends, and they seamlessly shifted through techno/house and disco and keeping everyone one their toes. 


Highlighted track: Josh Wink - Used to be

“This song is quite new, but captures the essence of a sexy acid house record. In a timeless way. The vocals always make me wander through my mind, and makes me reflect on my past life. For some reason it really triggers quite some emotions with me”.

Tom Trago... IsBurning #161

Tripped-out excursions through percussive club music with the Nowadays resident.

Ayesha Chugh, AKA Ayesha, makes club music that activates the body. The Brooklyn-based artist has spent the last few years carving out a distinct lane in modern club music. Her fusion of dubstep, techno and essential '90s rave elements into dynamite club tools that test and support dancers in equal measure. This time though, for her RA Podcast, Chugh purposefully tilts in a "more colorful wonky direction."

Since first turning heads with releases on labels like Fever AM and Kindergarten Records, she’s continued to refine a sound that feels both playful and punishing, marked by writhing basslines, rumbling drums and an innate ability to make bodies move. Her productions capture a kind of kinetic precision—tracks that are slippery yet forceful, balancing psychedelic textures with dubstep-like physicality and club-focused power. As Andrew Ryce wrote of her debut, Rhythm is Memory, her skill is "full of textures that wrap around the otherwise thudding, sub-heavy kick drums." After a serious accident in 2024 stopped her in her tracks, this year marks a full return to global touring with a new vantage point on life and the sound she seeks to push.

RA.983, clocking in at nearly two and a half hours, finds Chugh flexing that club muscle once again. Offering a tour through global club music both old and new, it's based around a set at her home base Nowadays this February. It's a patient but relentless ride: from deep, tunneling psytrance, progressive techno and slippery electro before really turning on the gas at the half mark, moving into slanted UK techno territory.

As she explains in the Q&A, it's a carefully curated selection of tracks that probes "what we perceive as tasteful." It's a mix that speaks to her deep knowledge of dance music’s lineage—and her intuitive ability to push it forward.

@aye5ha
Find the interview and tracklist at ra.co/podcast/983

RA.983 Ayesha

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

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

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

A joyride through rave-ready tech house, speed garage, jungle and more.

To the casual onlooker, Enzo Siragusa may seem easy to pigeonhole as just a UK DJ playing chunky house music. Wrong. The Maidenhead native has serious pedigree, earned from 30-plus years fully immersed in the rave, first as a dancer at jungle and hardcore parties, then as a hobby DJ and finally as the cofounder of one of London's most influential club nights: Fuse.

What began life in 2008 as a ramshackle afterparty on Brick Lane is now a global brand with multiple festivals and roving events, and Siragusa its figurehead. For years, Fuse's MO was doggedly down to earth, built on a love for intimate shows where the residents took top billing.

Its impact on modern dance culture is clear to see in the runaway success of the so-called UK tech house movement (think Michael Bibi, PAWSA and Chris Stussy). And yet Fuse always cut deeper, darker and dubbier.

"I felt you could bring the emotion of jungle and hardcore into minimal house, which is what became the Fuse sound," Siragusa told fabric last year. A child of Metalheadz as much as Perlon, his tastes—and vast vinyl collection—run wide, and today the breadth of these influences inform his creativity behind the decks more than ever.

As RA.1008 illustrates acrpss nearly two hours, dazzling tech house, minimal, speed garage, jungle and more all fit under Siragusa's roof. The blending is sublime, each new transition a window into a fleeting sonic world. There's no tracklist, with a clutch of totally unreleased tunes aired for the first time. Happy IDing.

@enzosiragusa @fuselondon

https://ra.co/podcast/1027

RA.983 Ayesha

Resident Advisor