Hudson Mohawke Essential Mix-11-28-2009

Flying Lotus Essential Mix 29.11.2008

The arena-conquering duo glide from gritty rave to skyscraping arpeggios on RA.1000, a mix many years in the making.

A new name undeniably entered the pantheon of major electronic live acts over the past decade: next to Faithless, The Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers, now sit @feelmybicep.

The Belfast duo's music doesn't half reach for the stars: a melodic blend of ambient, breakbeat, trance and tech house, able to turn the biggest arenas into intimate affairs.

If anything, mainstream success, BRIT Award nominations and mammoth dance crossovers like "Glue" have only hardened Andy Ferguson and Matt McBriar's resolve to keep innovating.

Their prized blog, running for nearly as long as the RA Podcast, regularly platforms upcoming artists. And you won't find many festival headliners releasing climate change-themed records with Indigenous artists, as they did recently on Takkuuk.

RA.1000 exists in that spirit. After many polite declines, and before a year off to usher in the next era, Bicep come through at the last: from dub techno and screwface breaks to São Paulo garage, before a tide of signature synths floods the zone. Stadium-sized intimacy at its finest.

@feelmybicep 

Find the tracklist and interview at ra.co/podcast/1015. Listen to all RA.1000 mixes, as well as the complete history of the RA Podcast, at https://1000.ra.co

RA.1000 Bicep

HAAi will be mixing in new versions of tracks from her new album HUMANiSE as well as world premiering the screening of the film she created for the album. 

https://www.instagram.com/haaihaaihaai/?hl=en
https://soundcloud.com/haai-2



HAAi @ The Lot Radio 09-10-2025

Track list :

01. ANNE – Zephyrus
02. Bours? – Silent Clubstep
03. Gaetano Parisio, Marco Carola, C&G Southsystem – Dual EP B1
04. Hurdslenk, Vault Records – Rain (Original Mix)
05. Modem – Seduction
06. D.A.V.E The Drummer – Hydraulix 16 C (Original Mix)
07. Remco Beekwilder – Fire From The Shadows
08. DJ Dextro – Bone Collector (Original Mix)
09. D.A.V.E The Drummer & Pattrix – Hydraulix 15 B (Original Mix)
10. MarAxe – Souls (Jerome Baker Remix)
11. MarAxe – Tribe
12. Drumsauw – Cycles (Original Mix)
13. Regent – Permean (Original Mix)
14. Drumsauw – Collision (Original Mix)
15. Ado (Col), Yuuta – Hefesto (Original Mix)
16. Agent Orange DJ – Unseen Force (Original Mix)
17. Augusto Taito – Tentacolurting (Latex Repaint)
18. Dave The Drummer – Hydraulix 06 A (Original Mix)
19. Case – Injection (Original Mix)
20. Drumsauw – Empire (Original Mix)
21. Levzon – Intense (Original Mix)
22. Hertz – Warehouse Beats (Original Mix) (Sway) 138
23. D.A.V.E The Drummer & K.N – Hydraulix 23 A (Original Mix)
24. Marck D – Awakenings (On Edge Society Records)
25. Inox Traxx – In My Darkness
26. Alt8 – Ai que gostoso (Goncalo M Remix)
27. HUJUS – Division
28. Klint – Emphasis (Original Mix)
29. Hertz – Context (Dem Drums)
30. Franz Jager – Evo Devotion (Original Mix)
31. Sera J – Illusions
32. Chlär – Exoskeleton
33. R.M.K – 16 Bits (Fossil Archiv Records)
34. Alarico – Stingray
35. Vilchezz – Odyssey (Original Mix)
36. Rorschack – Andromedario
37. Uncertain – Warp (Original Mix)
38. Marco Bailey – Smooth Drive (Deniro Rework) (Materia Records)
39. Callum Magnum – Seductor (Original Mix)
40. Anteac – High For This
41. Jay Lumen – Locomotive (Original Mix)
42. Alarico – Troia (Original Mix)
43. Burden – Holy Ghost
44. Sicion – Breaking Point
45. Vinicius Honorio & Theo Nasa – Endless Love (Original Mix)
46. D.A.V.E The Drummer & Jeff Amadeus – Hydraulix 13.8 B (Dave The Drummer & Jeff Amadeus Remix2)

Enjoy....

Techno Mix 09.25

Lost Village 23rd August 2025

20 years later...

In recent times there has been a lot of looking back to the early 1990s in house music which made me curious about what my dj sets actually sounded like back then. As it's 20 years on I thought it might be fun to put one up as an Optimo podcast, but sadly I had no recordings of that time as I had long given away or lost any tapes i had from then (everything was on cheap C90 cassette tapes in those days). Then, last week a local producer sent me his album to peruse and mentioned that he had a couple of mix tapes of mine, both from 1991.

So, here is a genuine 1991 mix recorded in that year when I was co-resident at Pure in Edinburgh (which ran from 1990 - 2000) when i was known simply as Twitch rather than JD Twitch (the JD was added many years later to stop people billing me as DJ Twitch, which I loathed).

Although I started djing in 1987, I didn't start mixing records together until 1990 and couldn't afford turntables until the end of that year, so initially when i was djing at Pure I was literally learning on the job. Thankfully the euphoria of those times coupled with the fact it was all so new and exciting to so many meant that I got away with it as audiences were a lot more forgiving than they are today. Requests were fairly rare and usually a lot more oblique, often along the lines of "Can you play some "E" music?" Heckling or shouting "come on!', "harder!", "techno!" was non existent. it wasn't a better time, just different, but audiences in general were a bit politer and more patient.

This mix is two sides of two different C90 cassettes stuck together. The first half is from late 1991. It has a lot of that "E" music people were asking for on it. The mixing ranges from pretty good to the odd "ouch" moment but overall is not bad for a beginner. The second half is from earlier in 1991 and the mixing is a lot more, uh, "freeform" and gets through a high number of tracks in a short time. I think this section may have been recorded live at Pure although I can't be sure as despite running for ten years we only ever made a tiny number of live recordings. There are a couple of massively cheesy and seriously dated rave anthems on here and a couple of tracks I have absolutely no recollection of ever having heard in my life, but there is also a lot of music that I still play to this day and indeed have never stopped playing since, and some, such as MK's "Burning", Mike Perras and CLS that are enduring classics. To use the parlance of back in the day, the mix gets a little "mental" towards the end. The tape begins with a live recording of a bit of chat from the Ragga Twins live at Pure in early 1991 and ends with a particularly twisted take on David Lynch's "Lady In The Radiator Song" followed by a blast of Throbbing Gristle. Sometimes I'd drop in things like that at Pure which maybe helps explain why a few regulars ended up with mental health issues! Pure had a reputation for being a techno club and in the early days a temple to all things rave but it was always a lot more than that (as well as those things too of course) as this podcast demonstrates. Despite the sound (and mixing) limitations I think it's an interesting document of what was going on in my world 20 years ago. 


The audio fidelity of this podcast is not high, particularly in the second half. The original cassette tape was probably copied multiple times as it was passed around from person to person. Richard Chisolm who excavated the tapes has done some remastering to improve the sound but old multi generation tapes rarely sound good and it was probably quite lo fi to begin with. It was mixed live using a cheap mixer through a cheap amp. Back then the vast majority of dj mixers were very basic - no eq, no gain and no gizmos whatsoever; just a volume fader, a crossfader and phono / line switches which I used to flick to cut tracks in and out. The mix is 85 minutes long and is a 192kbps mp3 (118mb). 

Thanks to Richard aka Restless Native.
 

Optimo Podcast 11 - Twitch 1991 (recorded in 1991)

HAAi - BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix 
29.09.18

Winner of BBC Essential Mix of the Year

BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix

Blawan's 2hr masterclass of pure techno essence at Unpolished 2019.

Blawan at Unpolished 2019

As part of my Advanced Programming for Mobile Devices module at university this year we were asked to plan and develop a mobile application of our own choice, so I decided to do my first scratch looper app using Android Studio. Having made several flash looper programmes using Swish Max 4 over the past few years, I’ve wanted to make one in app form for quite a while so it was a bonus to be able to incorporate it into my studies. Trigger beats by clicking on icons 1-6, the BPM of each beat will also be shown on screen when an icon is pressed. A timer is displayed on screen to monitor the duration of your scratch sessions as well as a stop button and an exit button. Clicking the TapeFive logo directs you to my personal Soundcloud which has loads more looper beats and DJ mixes.

TapeFive Scratch Looper v1 app is available on Google Play for free download on Android devices running Android version 5.0 or higher.

Beat 5 - 105 BPM

Twitch & Wilkes' classic BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix from November 2006.

http://www.optimo.co.uk

Optimo Espacio - BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix Nov 2006

CODENAME RUCKUS

TAMOBANT3R

Back in the Early 1980's my Dad owned the first video shop in Dumfries called 'Tape Five'. In honour of that I've changed my DJ name (again) and will produce music under the name TapeFive.

Beat 5 - 105 BPM

TapeFive

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