Sultry low-end grooves from a rising house enchantress.
"What kind of music do I actually want to play?" Every artist asks themselves this at some point in their career. What is a sound? And why do we personally identify with it? For Lea Lang, AKA dj sweet6teen, this question is the guiding force behind her RA Mix.
Born in Aachen, a German spa city close to the border with Belgium, Lang found her musical feet in the vibrant student hub of Cologne. It was while studying social work at the Technische Hochschule that she fell into the nightlife scene.
Finding her sound wasn't an instant process. Lang cut her teeth on breaks-heavy house and prog (think Angel D'Lite), traces of which you can hear peppered across RA.1004. But as she explains in this week's Q&A, the pandemic years were, musically, a turning point.
"High BPMs and short-lived trends became very dominant and I realised I couldn't stand the pace anymore," she writes. "That's when my sound naturally shifted into something more minimalist and timeless."
Nowadays, you'll find Lang in Berlin during the week, and on weekends… well, take your pick. A busy touring schedule means she's on the road almost constantly —this summer she's debuted at Horst Arts & Music, Butik, Dimensions and Panorama Bar (to name just a few).
And her RA Mix? It oozes charm from the jump. Buoyant with gyrating low-end, it's hard to think her sound was ever anything else: vocals twirl around analogue basslines, material à la Eddie Richards and Terry Francis's historic Wiggle parties, as well the kind of bongo action that wouldn't feel out of place in an Apollonia session. Call it waft, wiggle, smooch house—whatever it is, we like it.
@djsweet6teen
Find the tracklist and interview at https://ra.co/podcast/1022
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Sultry low-end grooves from a rising house enchantress.
"What kind of music do I actually want to play?" Every artist asks themselves this at some point in their career. What is a sound? And why do we personally identify with it? For Lea Lang, AKA dj sweet6teen, this question is the guiding force behind her RA Mix.
Born in Aachen, a German spa city close to the border with Belgium, Lang found her musical feet in the vibrant student hub of Cologne. It was while studying social work at the Technische Hochschule that she fell into the nightlife scene.
Finding her sound wasn't an instant process. Lang cut her teeth on breaks-heavy house and prog (think Angel D'Lite), traces of which you can hear peppered across RA.1004. But as she explains in this week's Q&A, the pandemic years were, musically, a turning point.
"High BPMs and short-lived trends became very dominant and I realised I couldn't stand the pace anymore," she writes. "That's when my sound naturally shifted into something more minimalist and timeless."
Nowadays, you'll find Lang in Berlin during the week, and on weekends… well, take your pick. A busy touring schedule means she's on the road almost constantly —this summer she's debuted at Horst Arts & Music, Butik, Dimensions and Panorama Bar (to name just a few).
And her RA Mix? It oozes charm from the jump. Buoyant with gyrating low-end, it's hard to think her sound was ever anything else: vocals twirl around analogue basslines, material à la Eddie Richards and Terry Francis's historic Wiggle parties, as well the kind of bongo action that wouldn't feel out of place in an Apollonia session. Call it waft, wiggle, smooch house—whatever it is, we like it.
@djsweet6teen
Find the tracklist and interview at https://ra.co/podcast/1022
The German minimal DJ returns to the spotlight with two hours of artfully subtle house and techno.
There's an old German proverb that goes "Der stete Tropfen höhlt den Stein." Literally, it means a constant dripping wears away the stone, but the point isn't about force but patience: slow, steady repetition can leave the deepest mark. It's an apt metaphor for the career of Kosta Athanassiadis, better known as XDB.
Active since the early '90s, first as a DJ and then producer by the decade's end, Athanassiadis has built a career less on hype than persistence. His catalogue spans labels like Dial, Metrolux and Echocord, alongside a steady trickle of EPs and remixes that have quietly cemented his reputation as one of minimal house and techno's undersung heroes.
That patience carries into his sound and production ethos. Where many of his peers embraced software upgrades and new workflows, Athanassiadis has long stuck to Cubase, a handful of trusty instruments and 30-year-old speakers he claims to have run "hundreds of thousands of tunes" through. He also still prefers to use inexpensive, straightforward gear—what matters, he insists, is not the tools but the feel. The result is a sound that’s stripped back, direct and enduring.
Lately, Athanassiadis has found himself back in focus. With minimal enjoying fresh attention, his calendar has filled, and with it a run of back-to-back sets—most often alongside PLO Man, a regular sparring partner this year. True to form, though, you won't find that his style has changed much. Over 30 years after his first gig, you can rest assured you'll still find him playing with patience, carving out long arcs rather than sharp peaks.
His RA Mix captures him in a reflective mood. Running just over two hours, RA.1003 is a hushed yet absorbing affair, moving seamlessly from the delicate atmospherics of Valentino Mora and Caldera to the machine funk of Robert Hood, Solid Gold Playaz and Marcellus Pittman. There are left turns folded into XDB's patient narrative arc, too: John Carpenter's brooding scores here, DJ Sprinkles' melancholic work with Will Long on "Acid Trax N (Acid Dog)" there. It's the sound of a DJ who has been quietly chiseling away for three decades, and who understands the value of persistence as much as restraint.
@xdb
Find the tracklist and interview at ra.co/podcast/1021
RA Podcast
Sultry low-end grooves from a rising house enchantress.
"What kind of music do I actually want to play?" Every artist asks themselves this at some point in their career. What is a sound? And why do we personally identify with it? For Lea Lang, AKA dj sweet6teen, this question is the guiding force behind her RA Mix.
Born in Aachen, a German spa city close to the border with Belgium, Lang found her musical feet in the vibrant student hub of Cologne. It was while studying social work at the Technische Hochschule that she fell into the nightlife scene.
Finding her sound wasn't an instant process. Lang cut her teeth on breaks-heavy house and prog (think Angel D'Lite), traces of which you can hear peppered across RA.1004. But as she explains in this week's Q&A, the pandemic years were, musically, a turning point.
"High BPMs and short-lived trends became very dominant and I realised I couldn't stand the pace anymore," she writes. "That's when my sound naturally shifted into something more minimalist and timeless."
Nowadays, you'll find Lang in Berlin during the week, and on weekends… well, take your pick. A busy touring schedule means she's on the road almost constantly —this summer she's debuted at Horst Arts & Music, Butik, Dimensions and Panorama Bar (to name just a few).
And her RA Mix? It oozes charm from the jump. Buoyant with gyrating low-end, it's hard to think her sound was ever anything else: vocals twirl around analogue basslines, material à la Eddie Richards and Terry Francis's historic Wiggle parties, as well the kind of bongo action that wouldn't feel out of place in an Apollonia session. Call it waft, wiggle, smooch house—whatever it is, we like it.
@djsweet6teen
Find the tracklist and interview at https://ra.co/podcast/1022
