RA Podcast

Decades after walking away from trance, the superstar DJ unpicks the machinery behind his own brand, and what a career spent at the top actually costs.

Tiësto has been one of the biggest DJs in the world for the better part of 30 years. Since the '90s, the Dutch artist has been part of an elite inner circle who dominate major festival bills, residencies in Ibiza and Las Vegas, and command some of the most astronomical fees in the industry. Even if he isn't part of your regular listening diet, you've almost certainly heard his music on the radio or pouring out of bars and clubs around the world.

It's easy to forget, though, that he made his name in trance—a genre he publicly walked away from more than a decade ago, saying he'd done what he wanted with it and wouldn't be going back. As of this summer, he's finally changed his mind, announcing his return with a set at Silverworks Island in London.

In this Exchange, he talks about being inspired by the new wave of trance DJs and the artists putting a modern twist on the genre. He also reflects on the years before Tiësto was Tiësto: cleaning club bathrooms, selling records to Jeff Mills as a young store clerk, producing gabber under a secret alias and being inspired to take up DJing after seeing Sven Väth play live. Listen to the episode in full.

An antidote to the summertime banger, with an hour of breezy ambient from the Vienna artist.

When we picture the summertime banger, we picture high energy. But with record-breaking heatwaves from South Korea to the South of France, a different soundtrack makes sense.

Cue RA.1051. Across an hour of woozy lo-fi electronics—many his own productions—Mietze Conte offers the alternative, inspired, as he puts it below, by "the fresh cool cleansing breeze" after a storm.

At his most energetic, the Vienna artist appeals to fans of Live From Earth or 1tbsp—eurodance meets hyperpop with a DIY smirk. At his most contemplative, he drifts toward the ambient reverie of Otto Benson and Dylan Henner. What ties it together is playfulness: songs under two minutes, hand-drawn covers, music that's deeply serious and deeply unserious at once.

Here he goes wide without raising the temperature, from Green-House to Nala Sinephro to Terekke's dub-hazed loops. Step into his world and find some much-needed shade.

Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1070

@mietzeconte

An antidote to the summertime banger, with an hour of breezy ambient from the Vienna artist.

When we picture the summertime banger, we picture high energy. But with record-breaking heatwaves from South Korea to the South of France, a different soundtrack makes sense.

Cue RA.1051. Across an hour of woozy lo-fi electronics—many his own productions—Mietze Conte, AKA Matthias Oldofredi, offers the alternative, inspired, as he puts it below, by "the fresh cool cleansing breeze" after a storm.

At his most energetic, the Vienna artist appeals to fans of Live From Earth or 1tbsp—eurodance meets hyperpop with a DIY smirk. At his most contemplative, he drifts toward the ambient reverie of Otto Benson and Dylan Henner. What ties it together is playfulness: songs under two minutes, hand-drawn covers, music that's deeply serious and deeply unserious at once.

Here he goes wide without raising the temperature, from Green-House to Nala Sinephro to Terekke's dub-hazed loops. Step into his world and find some much-needed shade.

Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1070
@mietzeconte

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