RA.1038 The Trip

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