LUKE SOLOMON LIVE GABRIELLA NYC JULY 25

Here we present at last the superb set from the master Greg Wilson on 28th June 2025 from Downtown Disco @ Goodlife Festival, Leeds!
We hope you enjoy it as much as us.

GREG WILSON @ DOWNTOWN DISCO GOODLIFE LEEDS 28.06.25

RA.1000 launches with Theo Parrish, live at fabric: a vanishingly rare club mix from the king of deep crates and impossible transitions.

There are DJ sets and then there are Theo sets. No matter how many times you've caught him in action, every time still feels like the first. Running hot, levels smoking, isolator working over time. You think you know dance music? Think again.

Parrish's debut on the RA Podcast is a milestone for the series, one we've sought for over 15 years. So it was only right that Theo led off our 1000th celebrations. Recorded live at fabric last December as part of RA's party with the London club for their 25th anniversary, this three-hour segment documents the crescendo of his eight-hour marathon. 

The Detroit legend doesn't release mixes often, and when he does, they're usually studio recordings: think NTS shows, his 100% Detroit edition of DJ-Kicks or classic tapes Body (1997) and Methods of Movement (2000). A capture of the Sound Signature boss on the dancefloor is hard to come by.

Sure, there's galvanising build-ups and crowd-pleasers, but laced throughout a Parrish beatdown are rarities designed to shock the system. In a business dominated by marketing, the vinyl master towers above thanks to a relentless hunger for lustrous melodies, moods and textures of all stripes, which he and he alone can fold into an inspiring and exhilarating joyride.

On RA.1000, blissful reggae precedes new wave disco; '80s R&B morphs into synthy techno; bleepy Chicago jack makes way for a poignant vocal ballad. It's Theo through and through. Once again, he proves that anything and everything is possible with the right records.

@theoparrish @fabric @soundsignaturedetroit @crownruler

Listen to all RA.1000 mixes, as well as the complete history of the RA Podcast, at https://1000.ra.co

RA.1000 Theo Parrish

Andrew Weatherall's first official posthumous mix. The only b2b DJ Harvey ever agreed to. Six hours at Trouw. This one's special.

When mulling which direction to go in for RA's 1000th mix celebrations, many options came to mind. Some shadowy character 2-stepping around the fringe of our collective consciousness? An impossible-level IDM icon?

All tempting. But, ultimately, we are a DJ-forward publication and this is a DJ mix series. It felt truer to the history of the RA Podcast to release deep vault material from a time when the world of niche records felt different, tighter, more discrete.

The fourth-longest mix in the series' history is an unrepeatable marathon set recorded in 2012 at a superclub that no longer exists. 2012, incidentally, is farther away from 2025 than 2012 was from 2000... if we have to clock it, so do you.

It's the coming together of one British icon who passed away in 2020, and another whose time on the road has scaled back considerably as of late. DJ Harvey agreed to exactly one b2b set in his life: this one, with Andrew Weatherall.

The night took place at Trouw, an Amsterdam club already considered legendary before it shuttered its doors in the opening hours of 2015, as part of an RA series anchored around start-to-close combinations. Harvey was at the peak of an irresistible career second act, which dovetailed with a disco revival that dominated clubs for years. Weatherall, with infinite brownie points stockpiled from the '90s, remained everyone's favourite debonair psychonaut. 

What follows is 385 scintillating minutes of arpeggiated chug and slow-cresting climaxes: a moment when the resting heart rate of dance floors plunged lower than any comparable point in the 21st century. A masterclass, entirely self-contained in audio form.

If you've got time to spare, a fun side game is sussing out who plays what. A disco-dub cover of Echo & the Bunnymen? Smart money's on Weatherall. Exuberant EQ'ing of The Isley Brothers? Gotta be Harvey. As for the low 'n slow, lightly spangled house that was all the rage in the early 2010s (think Maxxi Soundsystem, Disco Bloodbath, Rub & Tug, C.O.M.B.I. and Full Pupp), it's anyone's guess. 127 BPM feels practically like an F1 car.

When we kicked off our RA.1000 campaign, we outlined a few goals: tick off a handful of long-awaited dream guests, honour architects who shaped the world around us and deliver recordings you truly can't hear anywhere else. Full send.

DJing and the mythmaking around it has undergone a quantum leap since 2012, let alone 2006, 1996 or 1989. For those of us who were kicking around in the former, there's a creeping melancholy that our prime is fast becoming a matter of historical record. The killing moon really did come too soon. 

Where will electronic music, DJ sets or any of this be in 2044? Hard to say. Best not to overthink that one. Instead, we want to say thanks to all contributors on the series so far. Now enjoy luxuriating in the company of two of the greatest to ever do it, together, for the first and last time.⁠ – Gabriel Szatan (Editor, RA)

@andrew-weatherall

Read the interview with DJ Harvey and Andrew Weatherall's family at https://ra.co/podcast/1016. Listen to all RA.1000 mixes, as well as the complete history of the RA Podcast, at https://1000.ra.co

RA.1000 DJ Harvey & Andrew Weatherall

For the penultimate RA.1000, we take it back to the source with unreleased tapes from the private collection of Frankie Knuckles, the Godfather of House.

This is Pt.I, from 1989. The mix is provided courtesy of the Frankie Knuckles Foundation.

For RA.1000 Frankie Knuckles in full and all information on this unearthed audio, head to https://ra.co/podcast/1018 or 1000.ra.co

RA.1000 Frankie Knuckles Pt.I (1989)

For the penultimate RA.1000, we take it back to the source with unreleased tapes from the private collection of Frankie Knuckles, the Godfather of House.

This is Pt.II, from 1996. The mix is provided courtesy of the Frankie Knuckles Foundation.

For RA.1000 Frankie Knuckles in full and all information on this unearthed audio, head to https://ra.co/podcast/1018 or 1000.ra.co

RA.1000 Frankie Knuckles Pt.II (1996)

For RA.1000, we take it back to the source with two never-before-heard tapes from Frankie Knuckles's private collection

There is no house music without Frankie Knuckles, literally or figuratively. The queer icon's luxurious DJ sets at Chicago's Warehouse gave a rising movement its name. From there, countless offshoots splintered and travelled the globe. But what did the genesis and growth of the sound really feel like?

The Godfather of House left behind not only timeless records, but personalised cassettes with hand-drawn liner notes handed out to friends and family. Two of those, dated to 1989 and 1996, have been digitised especially for RA.1000. (Thank you to the Frankie Knuckles Foundation.)

To put that in context: the first tape predates not only many of today's active clubbers, but the entire existence of jungle, drum & bass, UK garage, French touch, Jersey club, Afrobeats, IDM, baile funk, hardcore, footwork, dubstep, dub techno, tech house, breaks, minimal, maximal, gqom, gabber, grime and hyperpop.

In short… that's a very, very long time ago. The world of dance music was much smaller. DJ culture was functionally unrecognisable from the one we see in 2025. 

And yet, to some degree, what you'll hear on RA.1000 hasn't changed at all. It's a capture of not only what made Frankie Knuckles one of the beloved pioneers of first-generation dance music, but what draws people to club culture in the first place.

The mood on these Frankie Knuckles sets outlasts even its creator: a spirit of optimism that floods the world's best dance floors and keeps dance music pulsing on into the future, nearly 40 years later, in spite of it all. We end our 1000th mix celebrations here because it all starts there.

Find the tracklist at ra.co/podcast/1018. Listen to all RA.1000 mixes, as well as the complete history of the RA Podcast, at https://1000.ra.co

RA.1000 Frankie Knuckles

BILL BREWSTER | Live at Armadillo stage, Houghton Festival, Aug 9th, 2025

Expansive dub vibrations from the On-U Sound maestro.

Adrian Sherwood has spent nearly five decades reshaping how dub is heard and felt. From absorbing reggae and funk as a teenager at the Newlands Club in High Wycombe to cofounding On-U Sound in 1979, he’s been a restless force in British sound system culture. His debut production, Dub From Creation, signalled his instinct to twist the Jamaican form into bold, experimental directions.

That spirit defined On-U Sound, where reggae collided with post-punk, industrial and synth pop to forge a catalogue still unlike anything else. Sherwood became a crucial bridge, producing for legends like Prince Far I, Bim Sherman and Lee “Scratch” Perry, while also working with Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails and Sinéad O’Connor.

His  RA Mix (yes, you read that right) arrives at a moment of renewal—RA.1001 is the first in a new era for the series. (After 1,000 editions of the RA Podcast, we're updating the name to better reflect what it's become.) 

Recorded at his Ramsgate studio, the 76-minute mix folds in cuts from <i>The Collapse Of Everything<i> alongside material from across the On-U Sound universe, plus collaborations with Panda Bear, Sonic Boom, Coldcut and Spoon. It's Sherwood doing what he's always done: stretching dub into endless new shapes.

Find the interview and tracklist at ra.co/podcast/1019

RA.1001 Adrian Sherwood

Our night at NT’s Loft in Hackney on Friday 22nd August. 

Sing Your Own Song 240420

The Way Of The Cat

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