Month: July 2024

RA.946 Dar Disku : Bangers from around the globe. Dar Disku launched in 2020 with a question: how to channel heritage into dance floor elation? Well, when your label name riffs on ’70s Egyptian zine DAR and translates to ‘home of the disco,’ the brief feels pretty self-explanatory.

At first, that meant edits of Khaliji hi-NRG and Bollywood soundtracks to fit contemporary ‘crates, as well as a run of radio and parties in the UK—where they now reside—flexing deep finds from across the SWANA region while steadily upping the tempo. Their debut album, out in September, furthers the mission.

True to form, their RA Podcast is stuffed with heaters from all over the map: Algeria, India, Chile, Jordan, Australia, Turkey, Libya and Morocco get a look-in, as well as a few staple acts that betray the kind of high-wattage European festivals the duo increasingly frequent. And short wonder: this mix is 90 minutes of sunshine.

@dardisku @soundway-records

Read more at ra.co/podcast/946

EX.722 Bicep : “We used to roll up socks in our shoes to give us an extra inch.” The childhood friends talk about coming of age in Belfast and their label and event series, CHROMA.

Bicep—the Irish duo Andrew Ferguson and Matthew McBriar—have been winning over the hearts of fans with trance-inflected, melancholic dance music since 2009. In this interview with RA editor Gabriel Szatan, the childhood friends talk about how they got where they are, unpacking their creative process and the abiding musical influence of their hometown, Belfast, a city where emotional trance reigned supreme.

They also discuss their ongoing multidisciplinary project, CHROMA—a record label, event series and evolving live audiovisual show. Ferguson and McBriar say that the idea for CHROMA came from a sense that their DJ sets were becoming too “sugary,” so they buckled down with a renewed focus on creating dynamic new productions made specifically for the dance floor and their sets. The result is a string of hard-hitting EPs which you can find online now. Listen to the episode in full.