RA Podcast

The British sibling duo talk creative process, stepping away from successful solo projects and their new album, Pure Devotion, on XL Recordings.

Tom and Ed Russell are brothers who spent the first decade of their careers working separately, building solo careers with real underground momentum. As Truss, Tom made techno on labels like Perc Trax and R&S. As Tessela, Ed put out jungle and breaks on Poly Kicks and his own label, All Caps. Both walked away from them after a week in a Welsh cottage in 2015, when they wrote the material that would form the foundations of Overmono—today, one of the most popular projects in dance music today.

What binds them now is a set of self-imposed rules, designed to produce interesting accidents out of the studio. On their new record, Pure Devotion, that meant engineering genuinely out-of-the-box experiments: baking a crash cymbal in the oven overnight to see how would change with heat; running tape past magnets to erase half of what they were recording as they recorded it; and writing 84 versions of one album track, "Knights in Shining Prada," before settling on one that would make the cut. The brothers write obsessively in studios, hotels, airplanes and tour buses, a shared instinct honed to the point that they rarely disagree during the production process.

In this Exchange, RA Editor Gabe Szatan sat down with Tom and Ed to reflect on some of their more surprising musical inspirations, letting go of other people's opinions and summoning the courage to walk away from two solo careers that were arguably at their peak. Pure Devotion is out August 7th on XL Recordings. Listen to the episode in full.

The Príncipe all stars transmit the future sound of batida, live from Waking Life.

In theory, a supergroup should be a carefree yet thrilling assembly of well-known talents, bound to multiply each other's creative output. But in practice, bringing out the best in every artist on stage, especially for electronic musicians, most of whom are used to working solo, is not an exact science. O Ghettão—the powerhouse trio of DJ Niggafox, DJ Danifox and Firmeza, all associated with Lisbon's Príncipe record label—however, prove it can live up to it's promise. Armed with a handful of small drum machines, hand-sized controllers, and laptops packed with drum kits, the three are one the most exhilarating live acts in the underground.

About 20 minutes into RA.1050, amid an intoxicating polyrhythmic hoodoo, a commanding voice sneaks in the repeated phrase in over wistful, semba-laced chords. "Each one dances as they like," claims the MC in Portuguese, and few phrases could be more evocative of the O Ghettão sound. The wonder team came together at the latest Waking Life in Portugal and recorded another woozy, freeform live PA—a gargantuan patchwork ranging from outlandish batida to slapping acid house.

RA.1050 is also an indisputable sign of how vivid the batida scene, one they all forged, has truly become. Príncipe Records, founded in 2011, has spurred the birth of artists and imprints, like Nídia and Tia Maria Produções, while also fueling a new, welcoming spirit in Lisbon's nightlife, from Rua Rosa to clubs like Lux Frágil. Following a path paved by acts such as Underground Resistance, O Ghettão can indeed be tagged as an electronic music group. More than that, however, they're an impressive showcase of the intense renewal of sonic palettes crossed by Afro-diasporic idioms on the dance floor.

Read more at ra.co/podcast/1069

The long-anonymous Peak Oil favourite breaks cover with two hours that run from post-punk and dub to vintage New York house.

Mystery is a powerful force. What stays unknown stays enticing—negative space the listener fills in for themselves. Minimalists may be its largest constituency, and few have held the line as long as Topdown Dialectic.

That changed with False LP A, which finally named him: Izaak Schlossman, a San Francisco photographer who spent years issuing untitled, identically timed tracks with no narrative attached.

Coming out of the shadows hasn't cost the music its haze. Working in the Basic Channel lineage, Schlossman lays tracing paper over house and dub techno and pulls through the faintest outline—a bassline's shadow, the memory of a chord. Tracks surface the way bodies emerge in a steam room.

He belongs to a North American underground that's been among dance music's most progressive forces this past decade—no surprise, then, that he credits Scott Zacharias of Detroit's No Way Back in the Q&A.

This isn't quite the end of the mystery. Only the second Topdown Dialectic mix to surface, RA.1049 wipes the condensation from the glass just long enough for a look inside: it opens with a cut from German label Workshop before drifting from atmospheric post-punk and dubbed-out house into cosmic electro and, by the close, vintage New York house. It moves at an unhurried, chugging pace, but never mistakes restraint for stasis—each track quietly recalibrating until another contour comes into view.

Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1068
@peakoil
@falsearalia
@aught0101

The Peak Oil favourite and long-anonymous producer breaks cover with two hours that run from post-punk and dub to vintage New York house.

Mystery is a powerful force. What stays unknown stays enticing—negative space the listener fills in for themselves. Minimalists may be its largest constituency, and few have held the line as long as Topdown Dialectic.

That changed with False LP A, which finally named him: Izaak Schlossman, a San Francisco photographer who spent years issuing untitled, identically timed tracks with no narrative attached.

Coming out of the shadows hasn't cost the music its haze. Working in the Basic Channel lineage, Schlossman lays tracing paper over house and dub techno and pulls through the faintest outline—a bassline's shadow, the memory of a chord. Tracks surface the way bodies emerge in a steam room.

He belongs to a North American underground that's been among dance music's most progressive forces this past decade—no surprise, then, that he credits Scott Zacharias of Detroit's No Way Back in the Q&A.

This isn't quite the end of the mystery. Only the second Topdown Dialectic mix to surface, RA.1049 wipes the condensation from the glass just long enough for a look inside: it opens with a cut from German label Workshop before drifting from atmospheric post-punk and dubbed-out house into cosmic electro and, by the close, vintage New York house. It moves at an unhurried, chugging pace, but never mistakes restraint for stasis—each track quietly recalibrating until another contour comes into view.

Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1068
@peakoil
@falsearalia
@aught0101

A masterclass in the art of the all-nighter, as one of France's finest purveyors of funk delivers six hours live from Robert Johnson.

What does minimal sound like in 2026? Ask five DJs and you'll get five answers, from the acidic electro and techno of Montevideo to the dubby loops of Montreal. A real contender for the face of contemporary minimal, though, is Romain Poncet, AKA Traumer.

Poncet is, in many ways, old school. As a DJ, he offers a French twist on Rominimal: long, drawn-out loops mixed with imperceptible precision. In the studio, he turns out the kind of records you'd find in Raresh's bag. He didn't start out a minimal head, though. His early-'10s releases were driving techno and tech house, but around 2016 the Parisian changed tack, launching GET TRAUM — a label steeped in both Bucharest's ar:pia:r and France's own history of deep, stripped-back house.

Whatever the genre, his music is understated, never showy: DJ tools in the truest sense, designed for dancers and for DJs who want to tell a story over a long set. Case in point is RA.1048, a six-hour recording from Robert Johnson. The drums skip like kids let out for summer; the melodies sit between euphoria and melancholy. Swallow it whole or savour it course by course — RA.1048 is a Traumer tasting menu.

Read more at ra.co/podcast/1067
@traumer