RA Podcast

Sleek, sensual bass science from the NYC SLINK boss, sketching a new blueprint for dub in the 2020s.

Kenzo Perron, AKA K Wata, uses bass the way a poet uses punctuation. Sub weight, subtle wobbles and snaking rhythms become commas, dashes and periods—tiny gestures that shape movement, tension and release.

Perron's sound sits somewhere between the cavernous minimalism of Rhythm & Sound and the wiry precision of Livity Sound, pulling equally from sound system culture, contemporary minimalism and East Coast club music. His breakthrough 2021 EP, What Do U Wan, sounds like the photo negatives of a Fade to Mind record redesigned for sunrise at Sustain-Release (not to mention his work with Daytimers affiliate Enayet as E-Wata).

More broadly, Perron belongs to a a growing American underground reshaping dub techno and bass music in adventurous ways. What sets his music apart, however, is the way it balances delicacy with kineticism and, as his RA Mix makes clear, a touch of sexiness and intimacy too. RA.1039 draws from that very sonic palette.

RA.1039 is mainly composed of contemporary dub tracks released in the past decade (with a few choice exceptions). One minute we're wigging out to the krautrock-meets-Black Ark Studio of Eiger Drums Propaganda, the next we're slinking to the hi-fi club of Significant Other. In Perron's hand they melt into a molten liquid of sexy, sleek, bass science.

Find the tracklist and read the Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1058

@kwatakwata

The Radiohead guitarist talks about finding spirituality, life inside one of the most mythologised (and occasionally polarising) bands of the last 40 years, and his second solo album, Blue Morpho.

Ed O'Brien has been a guitarist in Radiohead since the band formed at Abingdon School in the mid '80s, playing a supporting role across a catalogue largely written by Thom Yorke. He comes from a guitar tradition that runs through Johnny Marr, John McGeoch and Will Sergeant—players who serve the music rather than themselves.

His second solo record, Blue Morpho, is his most fully realised statement away from the band. The themes running through it are spiritual, in the broadest sense. With anything related to group dynamics or current affairs averted by request, in this RA Exchange, O'Brien speaks with RA’s Editor Gabe Szatan about a long period of depression during lockdown, the meditation practice that pulled him through it and his deepening interest in devotional music and sound as a physical force, which has fed his subsequent songwriting. He also discusses the wider arc of a life in music: his years at Parlophone, the early Radiohead webcasts, the move from OK Computer to Kid A and what it felt like to climb back on stage with the band last year. Blue Morpho is out May 22 on Transgressive Records. Listen to the episode in full.

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