Urban Tribe - Nebula

Helena Hauff (@helena-hauff) expertly curated DJ sets spanning acid, electro, techno, EBM, and post-punk. Her powerful drum beats collide with freely wandering melodies. Her sound is tailor-made for those who appreciate raw, yet restrained intensity, dragging the dance floor into a frosty abyss. Her debut album "A Tape" in 2015 garnered attention for its intricate manipulation of sound, where she meticulously arranges gritty and rough noises, filling in the gaps with rhythmic intricacies. Her other releases, "Discreet Desires" and the EP "Have You Been There, Have You Seen," experimentally layer and intertwine, with twisted waveforms akin to rusted artifacts, creating an unfriendly listening experience that compels bodily movement to escape Helena Hauff's auditory swamp. It evokes sounds from the Hague's western coast in the Netherlands—blending synthesized tones of Italo Disco with the gritty spirit of Detroit. Despite its unfriendliness, "Have You Been There, Have You Seen" still offers warmth and rhythmic service to dancers with tracks like "Nothing Is What I Know" and "Gift." This year, renowned dance label fabric Records recognized Helena Hauff's unique selections and released "fabric presents Helena Hauff," recreating the dance scenes she once fostered at the Golden Pudel club in Hamburg, Germany.

Gigging incessantly (and still lugging a heavy box of records across the world), Helena's reputation earned her an invitation to join the BBC Radio 1 Residency. She was the subject of cover features for Crack Magazine and DJ Mag, played headline sets at Sonar (b2b with Ben UFO) and Dekmantel, and at the end of 2017, Crack Magazine declared Helena "The Most Exciting DJ In The World (Right Now)" and her ballistic BBC Essential Mix was voted the best of 2017. With razor-sharp precision, her melodies redefine Electro/Techno, adhering to her signature cold and dark taste over the past decade, regardless of current musical trends. Utilizing turntables for minimalist yet forceful performances, she effortlessly navigates between peaks and troughs, even with the risk of needle skips, confidently rolling cigarettes as she cruises at high speeds between highs and lows, making her a unique and standout figure in the scene.

PURE Guest.055 Helena Hauff

2 hours of romantic dub wobble, recorded live @ Terra Kontra x Pavilon festival in July of 2024. 🎵🏕️
@terrakontra 🔊

Route 8 @ Terra Kontra x Pavilon 2024

This set was recorded from 1:30am - 3am closing the Earth Stage after 2 days of continuous music at Dragon Dreaming Festival.

📷: Garlic Aeolian

Eastern Distributor ~ Jörmungandr @ Dragon Dreaming - 07.10.24

A mix beamed in from the future by singeli's young star.

If singeli has a new era, DJ Travella is its leading light. At just 23 years old, the Tanzanian producer is pushing the genre into fast, frenetic and unmistakably futuristic territory. And while there aren't too many entries in the RA Podcast's 20-year history where you can say, "this has no parallel whatsoever," RA.984 shatters that assumption in style.

Singeli emerged from Dar es Salaam's underground in the early '00s, forged from limited resources and unlimited creativity. Producers looped and sped up taarab instrumentals using basic software like Virtual DJ, creating a sound that was chaotic, witty and lightning fast. With support from local studios like Sisso and Pamoja, singeli took root as the breakneck pulse of Tanzanian youth culture.

Travella—real name Hamadi Hassani—came up outside that infrastructure. He began producing music aged ten, self-taught and internet-savvy. By 2022, he was touring Europe with Kampala-based collective Nyege Nyege and gaining global attention for a distinct style he's dubbed "cyber-singeli." 

Like gabber, hardcore and jungle before it, singeli is unapologetically go hard or go home. It's unique and utterly infectious. After all, what could possibly connect pop provocateur Arca to the late president of Tanzania? Not much—except singeli. 

Travella's RA Podcast is a white-knuckle ride through this blistering sonic universe. It's wild and joyful yet controlled—a window into one of the most exciting young minds in global club music.

@user-643479850

Find the interview and tracklist at ra.co/podcast/984.

RA.984 DJ Travella

Two titans of texture & energy, Yazzus and Jensen Interceptor, collide to bring us their emphatic & berserk 'Mecha Tools' EP. Four bass tech rhythm heavy eva's designed for the sole purpose of lifeform transcendence. Both Berlin based, they start things off by taking us on a trip to the magic city with their multi formed genre melting machine 'I'm Going To Miami' which sets the tone for the tools ahead. Echos of tribal, bass & techno are all layered throughout, fused to perfection, showcasing the pair's peak production prowess. Then the alarm is sounded with a jacking vocal chop on 'OMG Unit', which is met by an avalanche of thunderous drums and futurist patterns, constantly pushed along with quick experimental cuts, and a barrage of blanketing groove, 'OMG Unit' is a perc workout like no other. The quaking continues with 'ACT Right' which sees the duo fully launch their shared love for all things bass and scrapyard percussion. Finally, we get a slight cooling off with 'Killua 99' to bring us back down to earth, but make no mistake, K99 still strikes & jacks with an endless snare groove that parades over droning bass, along with some psych & rap vocal pairing creating perfect nerv synchronization.

Yazzus & Jensen Interceptor - I'm Going 2 Miami

For our 135th episode of So It Goes Radio, we’re honored to welcome our homegirl Bridget B as our guest. Based in Philadelphia, Bridget has quickly built a strong following in the local underground scene as a resident DJ for the Philly collective, Goodie.  

Her enthusiasm for deep house is one that we truly admire and we're excited to share this mix with you all to showcase why she's the baddest. Enjoy!

Follow Bridget B:
https://soundcloud.com/bridget_bbb
https://www.instagram.com/_bridget_b_/

So It Goes Radio #135 - Bridget B

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

Lean Back In The Yukon (JACOBDIOR EDIT)

catalarm - distress

And so we arrive at the end of the year, New Years Eve to be precise and there was only one DJ we wanted to have us screw-facing and fist pumping in 2018. Enter Stingray with a furious 90 minutes of power.

Recorded at his set at Katharsis Festival, it's one of DJ Stingray's best and favourite performances of the year so we're naturally thrilled to present it you today.

2017, you were turbulent, you were, at times, stressful but throughout the madness, there was a constant and that was DJ Stingray knocking it out of the park. Each and every time

catalarm - distress

titaniumdice