Optimo live from The Beach Stage at Love International 2023. 

First 3 hours of their 6 hour set on the Beach.

Live from the Adriatic 2023: Optimo

A very special recording from our 10 years of MFM event at Fairfield Amphitheatre last September between Jamie and Lauren. It was beautiful to see two close friends throwing down tracks, lost in the music and the thing that they love. You know things are going well when an hour into their set, Jamie and Lauren both asked if we were recording the set. Yesterday was Jamie's birthday and we and Lauren felt it was the right time to release this mix, as a celebration of Jamie and his music. Jamie Tiller b2b Lauren Hansom, live from Fairfield Amphitheatre ~ 4 hours of bliss ~ Jamie Tiller forever.

Jamie Tiller b2b Lauren Hansom (10 Years of MFM)

Deep house with heaps of soul to guide spring into summer.

"House music to me is about emotion… it's about how it moves you," says Suze Phaff, better known as Suze Ijó. Emerging from a thriving Dutch scene, Ijó belongs to a generation of DJs reshaping dance culture from the ground up, restoring soul and musicality to the centre of house music. It's a conversation happening not just in her home town of Rotterdam, but globally, among kindred spirits like MUSCLECARS and Dee Diggs in New York, Errol and Alex Rita of Touching Bass in London, and OMOLOKO in Belo Horizonte.

You could call Ijó a deep house DJ, but it's much deeper than that. Her sets embody house music in its most musical sense, rich in nimble percussion, woodwinds, calypso drums, gospel vocals, and romantic string sections. They channel the jazz-inflected heartbeat of the East Coast, the breeze of Balearic shores, and the light-footed rhythms of the Caribbean.

As Ijó explains in her Q&A, her RA Podcast "hopefully feels like a loving embrace." Opening with Key Trunks Ensemble's "Calypso of House (Paradise Mix)," she sets a buoyant, life-affirming tone that carries through the next 90 minutes. As the mix unfolds, her affinity for timelessness is clear, with selections that hark back to the golden age of house, from Lonesome Echo Production's "Sweet Dream (Shrine Sweet Mix)" to the euphoric swell of Blaze's "Klubtrance."

Listening to RA.986, it's no surprise that The Loft—David Mancuso's legendary, much-missed New York party—serves as a key influence for Ijó. "He wasn't confined to just one genre but would just play 'good music' in the right context," she explains. "He allowed the music to breathe."

If ambient music is defined by its ability to breathe in and reflect its surroundings, then Ijó's RA Podcast is ambient in the truest, most human sense: a deep, enveloping soundscape that feels like sunrise, like community, like home—wherever you may choose to listen.

@suze_ijo

Find the tracklist and interview at ra.co/podcast/986

RA.986 Suze Ijó

Phantasy’s long-running mix series continues apace with a contribution from a key figure in London’s electronic and alternative underground, Casper Clark. Perhaps best known under his former Volte-Face alias, this wide-ranging hour finds Clark reigniting his fundamentally eclectic sensibility, seamlessly blending records from Black Merlin, Idjut Boys and The Parallax Corporation, spanning twenty-five years of music at the authentic margins.

 PHANTASYMIX 52 by Casper Clark is available to stream now from Apple Music and on Soundcloud, alongside dozens of mixes from the label archive.

“I started DJing nearly 20 years ago, at least partially inspired by the way Erol used to play at Trash and later Bugged Out and beyond. I was lucky enough to book him over the years at our Adventures In The Beetroot Field parties as well as Field Day and even the Lock Tavern, which I used to programme back then. As I drifted more towards exploring techno under my Volte-Face moniker, our paths diverged somewhat, and a few years went by when I didn't bump into him or see him play all that often. So this mix feels like a homecoming of sorts, and an expression of a rekindled musical freedom and a cherished friendship. I even managed to squeeze in a track by Tiga, who was another formative influence for me. I hope it's as fun to listen to the mix as it was to make it.” - Casper Clark

PHANTASYMIX 52: Casper Clark

Colors of Life (Original Mix)

The legendary French DJ and producer cooks up a crispy selection of driving house and techno.

RA.107 Laurent Garnier

The Detroit techno legend takes to the decks for RA's 200th podcast.

RA.200 Carl Craig

RA.470 Andrew Weatherall

** Part 1 now available from here - http://soundcloud.com/alexchase/ohm-dedication-series-2-jd **

For my ears, Adrian Sherwood is the most sonically innovative producer the UK has ever given birth to. If you don't know anything about Mr. Sherwood or his ON U Sound label, either do a bit of Googling, have a listen to this mix or read this interview I was fortunate enough to conduct a couple of months ago (when he was in Glasgow) that is on the Racket Racket website - http://racketracket.co.uk/music/jd-twitch-meets-adrian-sherwood/

This mix covers music from the years 1979 - 88 and focuses on Adrian Sherwood's dubwise productions, most of which were released on his ON U Sound label (a great overview of the label can be found here - http://www.skysaw.org/onu/)

The mix is DUB in the widest (and wildest) sense of that word and veers from beautiful, heart-melting songs to cavernously deep, hard bass pulsations to the odd bit of brain melting sonic radicalism. To this day I don't think any other producer has pushed the envelope so hard which is partly down to a general lack of balls on the part of other producers and partly due to the fact that these productions were all recorded to tape and mixed on a desk with 100% outboard gear, so that pushing the tape way beyond its intended limits forms a large part of the character of the sound. His totally deranged dub techniques are perhaps a little more prevalent on part 1 (see below) of this podcast while this part is in the main more of a continuous heart throb with odd moments of sonic destruction, offering a masterclass in dub mixing techniques many of which Adrian Sherwood pioneered.

In my late teens and early 20s, Adrian Sherwood's work impacted on me more than anything I had previously heard and made me think about sonic possibilities in a completely new way. I would buy any record he had been involved with unheard and got into a lot of other artists purely because he had been involved with making their records. Indeed, my nom de plume "Twitch" came from a record he produced and our Optimo slogan "We Love Your Ears" came from the sleeve of a record he remixed. I hadn't listened to a lot of these records for many, many years and fell in love with them all over again while putting this together. It was a complete labour of love to do and a revelation to hear how fresh and wild this music still sounds.

The tracks are mostly mixed together but this podcast really isn't about my mixing at all - it's all about the 25 sonic missives included on it (several of the tracks are different versions of the same rhythm edited together). All the tracks were taken from vinyl so any unintended sonic imperfections are a result of the source records having been played countless times in the past.

This is part 2 of this podcast. Part 1 which focuses on his more electronic wild side (Tackhead, Fats Comet, Keith LeBlanc etc.) is now available here - http://soundcloud.com/alexchase/ohm-dedication-series-2-jd
Should you so desire, the 2 podcasts can be synced together to provide one continuous mix of around 3 and a half hours.

As usual we aren't making a track listing available for the podcast, simply because we feel that knowing the contents often precludes actually listening to it. But, if you want to know what anything is, feel free to get in touch and I will let you know. The mix is a 320kbps mp3 (230mb) and is 101 minutes long.

Optimo Podcast 12 - Adrian Sherwood On U Sound mix part 2 (dub)

House, techno, electro and all other assorted leftfield records — is there anything Optimo cannot do? Listen back to these Dekmantel regulars simply being at their best once again.

Optimo at Dekmantel Festival 2018

Recording of Andrew Weatherall's set at Dekmantel Festival 2019.

RA.470 Andrew Weatherall

Resident Advisor