RA Podcast

90 minutes of blissful, sun-soaked house from the essential UK producer duo.

For a certain type of DJ, a record from The Trip is a buy-on-sight proposition. Even if the name is new, you’ve likely heard their tracks in sets from Job Jobse, Shanti Celeste or Avalon Emerson. With a catalogue full of records equally at home at Pitch Music & Arts or fabric Room 2, Oliver Hiam and Max van Dijk have locked into a particular sweet spot: big, emotional dance music with enough drive to snap a festival crowd into focus, while still carrying the nuance and emotional pull of the best ’90s club records.

The key to this is decidedly old-fashion: clocking hours on the dance floor. Long before they became a hot-shot producer duo, Hiam and van Dijk were promoters first. For more than a decade, they hosted parties at Corsica Studios under the Tessellate banner, bringing artists like DJ Sprinkles, Mr. Ties and Octo Octa to London.

Think of RA.1038 as a marker for the start of summer: packed with bongo drums, piano breakdowns, and the occasional surprise (at one point, you might even hear what sounds like a dolphin sample). It hits that sweet spot for outdoor dancing: light, playful and just euphoric enough.

As they note in their Q&A, it traces a line through the deeper corners of their taste, ducking pure peak-time pressure to show off a real feel for tension and release—honed over years of reading the floor from both sides of the booth.

Read the Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1057
@tessellatelondon

The emergent star of the Belgian underground delivers 80 minutes of spectral techno, electro and leftfield obscurities.

Lola Haro has clubbing in her DNA. The Brussels-based DJ grew up around electronic music, with parents who were regulars at Antwerp’s Café d’Anvers and a childhood shaped by record stores and a household soundtracked by Villalobos mixes.

Since emerging in the late 2010s, she’s become a key figure in the Belgian underground, moving within a loose network of “diggers” exploring the deeper corners of electro, techno and house.

That sensibility comes through clearly on RA.1037, where Haro drifts through spectral techno, electro and leftfield club obscurities. The mix unfolds like a fever dream: spacious grooves give way to uneasy bass pressure and jagged, alien rhythms, before slipping back into murky, immersive flow.

Rather than genre, mood binds the set—slow, creeping tension and a sense of something always on the verge of collapse. Drawing on a recent warehouse set in Melbourne, it’s a study in subtle control, with blends so seamless the seams all but disappear. In the final stretch, arpeggios spill over like acid rain, dissolving any sense of solid ground.

Find the Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1056

@lola-haro

A rare snapshot of house music's early days, captured through an unheard 1986 broadcast from the East Coast pioneer.

For Humphries' long overdue debut on the RA Mix series, we publish an original, unedited radio recording from 1986, during Humphries' glorious reign over KISS FM's airwaves at the right hand of Shep Pettibone. Drawn from Humphries' own archives, the Running Back-sanctioned release captures the breadth of his reach at a time when he was breaking records week in, week out—bridging New Jersey talent, European imports and the emerging Chicago sound in a single sweep.

Every Friday and Saturday night, for over a decade, Tony Humphries checked in to Kiss FM, bringing the club to the airwaves. Alongside a residency at New Jersey's answer to Paradise Garage, Club Zanzibar, Humphries helped define the sound of garage house on the New York–New Jersey axis. Like Larry Levan, you simply can’t think of the city’s scene without him.

The hour-long mix shivers with spectral vocals and solar-plexus grooves alike, a document of Humphries knack for acting as a conduit for various funk-forward tributaries the world over. A mastermix, indeed.

Find the Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1055
@tony-humphries

The longtime BBC Radio 1 DJ talks about his rigorous music-discovery routine, soundtracking the world's most elite runways and the legacy of his party series, Deviation.

Since first stepping onto the airwaves more than 20 years ago, Benji B has spent his career bridging London club culture with the worlds of art and fashion. He's hosted his weekly BBC Radio 1 show for over two decades, founded the legendary Deviation party series, and served as musical director for Celine, Louis Vuitton and now Burberry.

Beyond the booth, the London DJ has also left fingerprints on some of the 21st century’s most defining records—from Kanye West's Yeezus and The Life of Pablo to projects by J Dilla, Pusha T, Sampha, FKA twigs, Tyler, the Creator, Arca and Flying Lotus. Across genres and scenes, he's become known as a consultant, collaborator and trusted ear at the highest level of culture.

In this Exchange, Benji B talks about the discipline it takes to sustain a life like this—including his rigorous, long-running "two-days-a-week" music search—and reflects on his creative partnership with the late Virgil Abloh. He also shares how he's brought underground innovators like Jeff Mills and Cybotron onto some of the world's most rarefied runways. Listen to the episode in full.

The star of São Paulo chops up 60 minutes of futuristic, global club sounds.

It's an oft-heard cliché to describe an artist as truly singular. But with Roniere Santos, AKA RHR, it couldn't be more true. Part of a generation of Brazilian and Latin American artists reshaping club music, Santos and his peers have propelled it to unprecedented global reach. His sets—fearsome, bass-driven and unbound by BPM—have made him essential at some of the world's most forward-thinking clubs and festivals, from Horst to Berghain to Gop Tun.

Behind the decks, his radical approach is both audible and felt through the body, driven by uncanny beatmatching and fluid harmonic mixing. Sonically, he pairs a knowledge of sound design with restless curiosity about music spanning continents and subcultures—evident in this recording, where Brazilian rap meets maqam-inspired melodies and breakbeat sections blend with deconstructed baile funk loops.

And while his reach is now global, Santos remains inseparable from São Paulo. It's where he found his footing: from his first residency at Tantša, to belonging at Mamba Negra, to the foundations of an international career.

For RA.1035, RHR crosses all the ground you might imagine—trance pads, dreamy pan flutes, post-dubstep, baile funk—with a menacing and seductive energy, a sense of discovery lurking behind every track.

Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1054
@rhrmusiq