If gqom has a CEO, it's probably DJ Lag. The South African artist has found enormous success since teaching himself to produce and DJ as a teenager in Durban, to the point that he famously worked with Beyoncé on the Lion King soundtrack. His style of gqom, a heaving, powerful type of club music, has become sleek and often catchy, growing from classic tracks like "Ice Drop" into thrilling hybrids like "Lucifer," his collaboration with amapiano artist Lady Du. 

Like so much dance music around the world at this point, DJ Lag's newest productions are informed by the red-hot, ultra-suave sound of amapiano, another South African-born genre. His long-awaited debut album, Meeting With The King, features plenty of flirtations with amapiano and house styles, working with some of South Africa's most talented artists and coming up with a sound he's christened Gqom 2.0. You can hear DJ Lag's expansive, exciting vision in his RA Podcast, an hour of cutting-edge South African dance music that lays out some of the sounds (and artists) you'll be hearing all year, from amapiano to Afrotech and Afro house and many intriguing things in between.

Read more including an interview with DJ Lag: https://ra.co/podcast/820

RA podcast

RA.820 DJ Lag

This very special pre-holiday treat is another Unsound podcast recorded at the 2022 festival in Kraków. Around 4am, a few hours after premiering his new live A/V show, Kode9 was back on stage in the second room to go b2b with Tim Reaper. These two heavyweights of the UK club scene circled between old- and new-school jungle, high-tempo footwork – sometimes raw, sometimes soulful – hardcore and beyond.
So turn up the volume, and let this euphoric mix navigate you towards the New Year in fine form!

Unsound Podcast 85: Tim Reaper b2b Kode9

“A bit hyperactive, and a mix of the old and new” from Kode9 on SonarMix 019, which finds common ground between Chicago footwork, classic UK jungle and mutant club hybrids. A warm up for his back-to-back set with SHERELLE at Sónar by Night.

Tracklist:
DJ Rashad - Juke Appeal
Moderat - Neon Rats (SHERELLE’S Sleepless in Philadelphia Remix)
DJ Manny - Express Lane
DJ Taye - Foolin
Hyph1EE - Barnacles (Kode9 Remix)
DJ Babatr - Las Lomas (Kode9 Remix)
EQ Why - Under Pressure
Ikonika x 45Diboss - Love Di Gal Dem
DJ Marfox - Un Bes Bai
DJ Paypal - Slim Trak VIP
Phil - GO Down Deh VIP
DJ Paypal - Xylo 
K-Rai - Badbwao VIP
DJ Manny - 2AM
Heavee - Make It Work
Omni Trio - Renegade Snares
DJ Manny - Skipped a Beat
DJ Chap - Ritual Union
Cuenique - Rage
DJ Manny - Acid Works
Hank - NFL
Hudson Mohawke - Behold
Philip D Kick - Orbit
Black Rave Culture - Sub Poppin
Cold Storage - Messij (Kode9 Remix)
DJ Manny - Funky Chop
Serre & Snugs - If I Could Bring You Back
LCY - What It Could Be
DJ MC - Do It Again
DJ Manny - Rebo (Juked Out)
Kode9 - Infirmary
Please - Orbital
Eram - You Shot Me Down
EQ Why - Juke Everything
SHERELLE - Jungle Teknah
Tim Reaper - The Cosmic Connection
Rufige Kru - Terminator
Dev/Null - Dark Fours (Tim Reaper + Dwarde Remix)
DJ MC - Turn on Some Music
Quixosis - Burundanger 2 (Flore Remix)
Kelela - Washed Away x Photek - Complex (DJ Stefan Refix)

SonarMix 019: Kode9

Recorded live from @RefugeWorldwide - this show inspired by Mist, all things deep, atmospheric and spacious, with some warmth and soul -- dub techno, deep house, dub-wise tracks.

𝙡𝙞𝙦𝙪𝙞𝙙𝙩𝙞𝙢𝙚 w CCL #12 Mist @refugeworldwide

The Dekmantel favourite kicks off 2025 in an exploratory mood.

Since her breakout in 2017, Thessa Thorsing has built an enviable CV: a debut release on Nous'klaer Audio, an album on Dekmantel and a residency at former Amsterdam clubbing institution De School. Over these years, she's honed a singular sound, navigating wild variations in tempo and mood that dance along the edges of techno, IDM and drum & bass (we could list many more, but you know the drill).

Her creative arc has seen her delve into ever more abstract concepts, such as 2024's ambient-leaning album, Strange Meridians, exploring the interplay between synthetic and natural textures through drumless experimentations. As she explained in her 2018 RA Breaking Through profile, "I just want to hear the weirdness in the music."

Thorsing's RA Podcast showcases exactly why she's one of the most  consistently adventurous names in dance music. Describing it as "a mix with a narrative," the former landscape architecture student flexes her ability to build sonic environments, beginning in a landscape more akin to a swamp than a club.

Across 90 minutes, she moves through numerous layered terrains, exploring everything from Skee Mask's lucid, beatless techno to the piercing acid of Mike Parker. Unfolding with a restless sense of curiosity, RA.970 captures an artist challenging the boundaries of electronic music, ever upward.

@upsammy

Read more at ra.co/podcast/970

RA.970 upsammy

Tripped-out excursions through percussive club music with the Nowadays resident.

Ayesha Chugh, AKA Ayesha, makes club music that activates the body. The Brooklyn-based artist has spent the last few years carving out a distinct lane in modern club music. Her fusion of dubstep, techno and essential '90s rave elements into dynamite club tools that test and support dancers in equal measure. This time though, for her RA Podcast, Chugh purposefully tilts in a "more colorful wonky direction."

Since first turning heads with releases on labels like Fever AM and Kindergarten Records, she’s continued to refine a sound that feels both playful and punishing, marked by writhing basslines, rumbling drums and an innate ability to make bodies move. Her productions capture a kind of kinetic precision—tracks that are slippery yet forceful, balancing psychedelic textures with dubstep-like physicality and club-focused power. As Andrew Ryce wrote of her debut, Rhythm is Memory, her skill is "full of textures that wrap around the otherwise thudding, sub-heavy kick drums." After a serious accident in 2024 stopped her in her tracks, this year marks a full return to global touring with a new vantage point on life and the sound she seeks to push.

RA.983, clocking in at nearly two and a half hours, finds Chugh flexing that club muscle once again. Offering a tour through global club music both old and new, it's based around a set at her home base Nowadays this February. It's a patient but relentless ride: from deep, tunneling psytrance, progressive techno and slippery electro before really turning on the gas at the half mark, moving into slanted UK techno territory.

As she explains in the Q&A, it's a carefully curated selection of tracks that probes "what we perceive as tasteful." It's a mix that speaks to her deep knowledge of dance music’s lineage—and her intuitive ability to push it forward.

@aye5ha
Find the interview and tracklist at ra.co/podcast/983

RA.983 Ayesha

Makeshift w/ Shai FM [ @shaifm ]. Makeshift is an evolving exploration of rhythm and sound, oriented towards global underground music. Spanning downtempo, global club / bass and occasionally experimental music, the show explores the liminal space between genres and tempos.

Listen live - 3rd Saturdays, 4-5PM ET at www.greatcircles.net

~Tracklist~
1. Yak - Uncle Legs
2. Pluralist - Tondaru
3. Product Toss - Bile
4. Batu - Meridian
5. Yushh - I Don't Care Until I Do
6. Ultramax & Cadeu - So Good
7. Drumskull - Recovered Artefacts
8. Viers - Blow
9. Bitter Babe - Nadie lo puede parar
10. Oso Feo - Clear Mind
11. Trussie - Scuzzy
12. Saudade - Mueve Tu Cucu
13. Coen - Slayer
14.  - ovid - tooth hurts [v2 demo]
15. noRecall - Listen
16. Josi Devil - Restless Sleep
17. Gloorp - Glimpse
18. SBWT - SBWT - Liquify
19. Insomniast - Ships in the Night
20. Dj Fucci x Manao - Sabores

Makeshift w/ Shai FM - 18May2025

1 hour of my 4 hour set at the inimitable Canary Test in LA.

DJ Plead - 05 June 2025

"It is not easy to find Saphira, and it is even harder to leave. Saphira is caught between a low-lying sun to the west and a glowing moon to the east, Saphira’s longing grows dense and time thickens within its walls. Perhaps this is why Saphira’s radios and televisions stutter with phrases and images so ghostly yet so intimately familiar, why its dusty buildings seem always to crumble so gloriously yet never collapse. It is a city inside of want and outside of time." 
Find the full tracklist and related episodes on NTS: https://www.nts.live/shows/ccl/episodes/ccl-30th-july-2025

Invisible Cities w/ CCL - Saphira 300725

U8 | TBK remix

High Tension

An amorphous global-minded festival and creative platform dealing with music, sound, words and related visual arts. Founded in Krakow in 2003, Unsound has taken place in 30 cities around the world.