Electronic music mogul Ned Beckett, returns once more under his Dream Sequence alias, with two fresh slices of electronica for our listening and/or dancing pleasure.

"Class mixing” kicks things off with tweaked 4/4 beats and bass alongside choral pads, airy atmospheres and twinkling arpeggios.
!Glitter Pump” continues the long heritage of Rephlex-Warp esq UK electronics, with crafty bass lines and edits building to an almost ravey resolution.

This 2 tracker from Beckett continues his series of archive releases, with works produced both solo and also alongside long term collaborator Chevron.

Track 1 written & Produced by N. Beckett & J. Valentine. Track 2 Produced by N. Beckett.
Mastered by Mark Hawkins.

Glitter Pump

Buy at Bandcamp

Dream Sequence - Glitter Pump - 1min 30 Clip

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

Mark Hawkins is a studio based musical artist with a career spanning more than 25 years.

Cutting his teeth in the UK underground party scene throughout the 90s, he has built an extensive body of work collaborating with a wide variety of record labels and artists, in numerous styles of electronic music under many different aliases, including his given name.

After two and a half decades of performing both as a live electronic act, and as a DJ, at many events around the world, which had included many of the most well known clubs and festivals, he decided to narrow his focus down to his main passion of writing, producing and engineering music in his Berlin studio, working on both his own material, and as a sonic “gun for hire”, assisting other artists in achieving their own aspirations in the studio environment.

Mark is a reclusive character who is more interested in sculpting sound, and searching for the perfect beat than promoting his own work, and as such declines to participate in the social media world which dominates contemporary culture.

Preferring to immerse himself in the world of audio manipulation, he has become a go-to studio engineer amongst those in the know, who want their own sound to take on a more professional sheen, or even a more retrospective aesthetic that relates to music from days gone by. 

But this has in no way slowed down his own output of material, in fact, without the distraction of unwanted self promotion or touring, he has been able to place an increased emphasis on crafting exactly the kind of music he wants to create for himself.

Looking ahead, Hawkins will continue to forge his own path via his artistry, blending styles and blurring the boundaries between genres, and will inevitably in the process discover and create exciting new works.

New tracks tagged #Leisure System