RA Podcast

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.1049, 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.1049 is a Traumer tasting menu.

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

The genre-fluid multihyphenate on motherhood, songwriting with FKA Twigs and her new album, Heavenly Body: If I'm the Bottle You're the Message.

American singer-songwriter Alexandra Drewchin (AKA Eartheater) is hard to pin down by design. In her music, acoustic instruments like harp and guitar collide with heavy digital manipulation, processed beats and classical technique. Her three-octave vocal range has carried her from operatic folk singing to literally shattering wine glasses on stage. Most recently, she co-wrote and sang on the title track of FKA Twigs' Grammy-winning Eusexua, and has since joined Twigs on tour in support of the album.

In this week's RA Exchange, Drewchin talks about her songwriting practice and her new LP, Heavenly Body: If I'm the Bottle You're the Message. The album arrives at a pivotal moment for the artist: she's recently become a mother and bought back the Pennsylvania farm her family lost when she was fifteen—a place she vowed, even then, that she would one day reclaim.

She reflects on that homecoming, and on how pregnancy, birth and motherhood shaped the record. She also discusses what she learned about songwriting from collaborating with Twigs, and her early mentorship under the late R&B legend Roberta Flack. Heavenly Body: If I'm the Bottle You're the Message is out now on Eartheater's label, Chemical X. Listen to the episode in full.

77 minutes of wickedly twitchy grooves from the belly of the New York underground.

"Music is meant to be shared. Music is meant to be shared. Music is meant to be shared."

This phrase is written again and again in the About section for the mix series and label pi pi pi. For deep creep, the force behind the popular platform, it serves as a radical promise: music is, and must always be, collective and communal.

On RA.1047, deep creep digs appropriately deep into her bag with a mix of minimal, tech house and dub, as well as flashes of techno and even a little flirt with electroclash. Pulses of sub weight, dubby melodies, introspective synths and quirky minimal funk make for a mix both dark yet euphoric, claustrophobic yet spacious. Dive in.

Read the Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1066

The Dutch producer on flow state, communal music-making and his new album, Music for Existing.

Martijn Deijkers, AKA Martyn, has spent close to three decades resisting labels. He grew up in a small Dutch village as a vinyl obsessive, buying his first 7-inch from a store that doubled as a sweet shop, before travelling to London in the mid-'90s to chase jungle and drum & bass. He later became one of the first artists from outside the UK to shape the capital's dubstep scene, fusing it with the Detroit techno and hip-hop of his youth. Since then, he has held a residency at Panorama Bar, started a successful label, 3024, and hosted a long-running monthly jazz show on NTS, Darkest Light.

In this Exchange with RA's Performance Content Lead, Tom Gledhill, Deijkers talks about dubplate culture in '90s London, the mentoring programme that's shaped his approach to creativity and his new album, Music for Existing, a collection of jazz-inflected electronics that explores the powerful, communal act of making music together. The LP is out now on 3024. Listen to the episode in full.

90 minutes of scintillating house and techno, primed for the heart of summer.

There's something delightfully paradoxical about Jennifer Loveless. Her productions skew hedonistic yet minimal; her DJing feels both spacey and oceanic. Hell, even her artist bio underlines her taste for opposites: "Jennifer Loveless is contrary to her name, all heart."

This yin and yang runs through RA.1046. Built around swung percussion, the 97-minute mix wanders across genre and time with an aquatic sensibility. She mixes her own tunes with early '00s tech house to craft a seaside mise en scène where new-school heroes like Pancratio and Ladymonix share fruity cocktails with certified legends (K-HAND, Jay Tripwire). Strap in for deep cuts that sound simultaneously galactic and like they floated up from the ocean floor.

Read the Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1064