Skee Mask is one of dance music's greatest crossover stories of the past decade, with new albums greeted with the attention usually reserved for an Aphex Twin or a Caribou. ("Loved seeing this on r/indieheads," said one Reddit user, on the release of the 2021 LP Pool.) It's not hard to understand why: albums like Compro, he blends well-worn dance music tropes with incredible, detailed soundscapes and spine-tingling melodies. And on his 12-inches, he brings that sensibility to the dance floor, with an approach probably best described as articulate. Even on his most ambient of tracks, everything is in its right place. Along with founders the Zenker Brothers, his music outlines everything that makes Munich outfit Ilian Tape one of the best techno labels going.

On the decks, it's kind of a different story. It might surprise you if you only know his albums, but Skee Mask is an incredible DJ, balancing his predilection for hip-hop and UK-informed sounds with laser-focused techno. He can adapt to all sorts of situations—there's an incredible recording of him DJing with four of the best grime and drum & bass MCs in the business—and on his RA Podcast he focuses on the techno side of things, with nearly two hours of pacey techno and creative mixing, with dips into acid, electro, garage and more. It's a party-starting mix from a genuine star, perfect for getting through the holiday doldrums or pre-gaming your NYE plans. Like Skee Mask's best records, it's something to enjoy in any number of settings.

@skeemask-music

Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/864

RA podcast

RA.864 Skee Mask

IBU 600 from Imaginary Friend crew - very special guest mix and refuge debut. check out more bits here: https://soundcloud.com/user-785368649

PLO_radio // drizle.FM - Ep:003 PLO man, IBU 600 - 13.12.23

Another Barker masterclass.

Sam Barker asks more from techno. The artist known simply as Barker is one of electronic music's most consistently conscientious and curious producers, challenging listeners to question the norms we accept about our shared culture—whether it's the music that fills the room, the process behind it, or the purpose of the space itself.

British-born yet based in Berlin since 2007, Barker forged a connection to many of the city's leading institutions, including Ostgut Ton, and over the course of a long and fruitful relationship, he carved out one of the more singular paths on the club and label's roster.

Not one for orthodoxy, Barker challenged four-to-the-floor techno framework in favor of melodic experimentation. By decentering or completely stripping away the typical trappings of kick drums and claps, his productions are both light and immersive, buoyant in low-end presence and shimmering in weightless space.

Six years after Utility, his sophomore album Stochastic Drift arrives this month. Shaped by pandemic-driven reinvention, it burrows deeper into harmonic twists and freeform drift. "At some point I became conscious of the process," he wrote of his latest album. "The only thing you can do is embrace the uncertainty and see every change as a potential positive.”

Consider his RA Podcast another sequel. Like his much-beloved 2019 mix for FACT, it's a collage of live recordings and a fitting expression of the artist's own internal spring. RA.982 radiates wide-eyed optimism: percussion cloaked in foggy, swirling pads and trance-like chords, neatly synched in synthetic glimmers. 

All in all, it's an hour of music crafted for contemplation, collective euphoria, or heads-down epiphany—or for that matter, any moment, really, its emotive depth seemingly endless.

@voltek

Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/982

RA.982 Barker

Australian producer Cousin warms up for his performance at Horst Festival's Moon Ra stage.

Cousin @ Kiosk Radio 29.04.2025

A rare club mix from the ever-evolving artist, with 90 minutes of shadowy, atmospheric pressure.

Music's therapeutic value is often linked to relaxation—gongs, singing bowls and the like. Dense passages of foggy droning and eerie static aren't traditionally considered restorative, but Laurel Halo makes a pretty good case for it.

The Detroit-born, Los Angeles-based musician's abstract, often improvised productions are heavy on sound design and emotional climax. Driven by atmosphere rather than rhythm, they push listeners to grapple with their innermost insecurities, fears and dreams. "I'm lucky my music has helped people through crises," Halo once told Discwoman. It's easy to see why.

Since her 2010 debut King Felix, Halo has built a stunningly diverse catalogue of classically-informed records. A multi-instrumentalist—piano, violin, guitar, keys—her sharpest instrument is arrangement. Inspired by the surrealism of Italo Calvino and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, her releases, from Atlas to Behind The Green Door, unfold with slow-burning narrative and dense emotional weight. Her soundworlds are layered and labyrinthine—an architectonic space where self-reflection happens almost by force.

Even in the club, the sought-after composer excels in immersion. Her sets extend the expressionist palette of her records, trading traditional rhythm for tension, space and surprise. It’s no wonder she takes a genre-agnostic approach to the dance floor—her deep roots in freeform radio began at WCBN-FM in Michigan, followed by Berlin Community Radio, Rinse FM, and now a regular show on NTS.

RA.992 stitches foggy ambient loops, propulsive techno, mutant percussion and heady left turns with care. Tracks from DJ Rush, Octave One and Eddie Fowlkes nod to her Midwestern heritage, balanced out by deeper, psychedelic fare from the likes of Polygonia and Cousin. It's the mark of an artist revealing both deep curiosity and a precise hand as a selector. Rare, indeed.

@laurelhalo

Find the full interview at ra.co/podcast/992

RA.992 Laurel Halo

The recording is from a night at Ohm back in March put on by Kontinuum and New World Dysorder. I remember feeling so comfortable with the space and the crowd who were up for good sound system pushing fun going freely through everything from d&b and elektro to freetek and jungle. Also shoutout to Ohm for always providing a solid vinyl setup!
---- @abnama

subglow/Live 5: Abnama @ Ohm

the 11th entry in our series come from a dear friend and label regular, Toronto based musician and DJ - @ciel_dj

Words from the artist :

"little sounds in huge expansive spaces"

This mix was my musical extrapolation of this quote. As I put together the tracks in the mix, the idea of small sounds in big spaces became more metaphysical, as a metaphor for memory and nostalgia. Small, seemingly insignificant events in our past can expand in significance over time, informed by our experiences later on in life, and with our emotions acting as a tool of reverberation, extending their presence in our lives far past their time of occurrence. What begun as a process of selecting tracks that quite literally feature "small sounds in big spaces" soon morphed into a dig into my distant past, to nearly 20 years ago when I first started learning to DJ. I pulled from the mnml tracks that had an important influence on my formative years, their impact can still be heard in the contemporary tracks I play today, all of them bouncing next to each other in this nearly 2hr musical collage.

naffcast011 ⦾  *̣̥☆·͙̥‧‧̩̥·‧•̥̩̥͙‧·‧̩̥˟͙ Ciel ˟͙‧̩̥·‧•̥̩̥͙‧·‧̩̥‧·͙̥̣☆*̣̥

Ilian Tape with the Zenker Brothers - 29 September 2025

Recording of Forcefield's set at the UFO II stage during Dekmantel Festival 2025.

Afra & Serge (Forcefield) at UFO II - Dekmantel Festival 2025

Tombak Girl

enjoy :)
19th october 2020

full stream:
https://youtu.be/_wjhGbNZL9c

full line up:
Alberta Balsam / Nala Brown / Serge / mad miran / Animistic Beliefs / Lenson

RA.982 Barker

Resident Advisor