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RA.1035 RHR

Published
Apr 19, 2026
Length
01:03:51

The star of São Paulo chops up 60 minutes of futuristic, global club sounds.
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It's an oft-heard cliché—certainly within the metaphorical pages of this magazine—to describe an artist as truly singular. But with Roniere Santos, AKA RHR, it couldn't be more true. Part of a generation of Brazilian and Latin American artists reshaping the sound of club music at home, Santos and his peers have propelled it to unprecedented global reach. His sets—fearsome, bass-driven and unbound by BPM—have made him an essential name in some of the world's most forward-thinking clubs and festivals, from Horst to Berghain to Gop Tun. A few things distinguish Santos. Behind the decks, his radical approach is both audible and felt through the body, driven by uncanny beatmatching and fluid harmonic mixing: check his transition from longtime friend Carlos do Complexo's "Atabacadinha" to NOTRN's dub remix of his own "Flexiona" in his RA Mix. Sonically, he has the ear of an audio engineer, pairing a knowledge of sound design with restless curiosity about music that spans continents and subcultures. The result is a thoroughly cosmopolitan sound, and it's evident in this recording, where Brazilian rap meets maqam-inspired melodies and low-slung breakbeat sections blend with deconstructed Volt Mix baile funk loops. And while his reach is now global, Santos remains inseparable from São Paulo, his hometown. Though raised in a small town in southern Brazil, it was Latin America's largest city that shaped him. It’s where he found his footing: from his first residency at the techno party Tantša, to a sense of belonging at Mamba Negra, to the foundations of an international career. For RA.1035, RHR shows us the world through his São Paulo lens. The 60-minute mix crosses all the ground you might imagine. One moment, '90s-esque trance pads give way to dreamy pan flutes, setting up an ethereal mood that's swiftly broken by Santos' signature post-dubstep. The most striking part, though, is his explorations in the baile funk continuum. With a menacing and seductive energy, there's a sense of discovery lurking behind every track. For RHR, music brings endless possibilities. -Felipe Maia What have you been up to recently? I've been diving deep into spectral synthesis and mixing techniques. I'm also looking to bring my live set back this year. I'm figuring out the best way to make that happen. I also just moved so I’m currently figuring out the acoustics and studying the space to get my new studio up and running. How and where was the mix recorded? And can you tell us the idea behind it? I recorded this mix right here in São Paulo at home. I used two CDJ-3000s and a V10 mixer. Plus, I did some edits on Ableton; some mashups, tossed in some acapellas, changed a few things here and there, and that's basically it. I got a bunch of tracks this past week from several friends: lots of unreleased material and fresh stuff too. There's a lot of textured sound, distorted bass and percussion-heavy music, and also some material I've been digging over the last few months. Some tracks in the middle are ones I've been playing throughout the 12 or 14 years I've been DJing. What are you looking forward to in the near future? Like I said, I'm studying new techniques for my live show. I want it to be visual—having that visual interaction where the sound messes with the image and vice-versa. So, the next few months are going to be all about me studying how to bring that back. What's one club or party that had a major impact on you as an artist? Over the past few years, Mamba Negra has helped me master my vision as a DJ and producer. I think it was like that for a lot of artists in Brazil, here in São Paulo especially. It's definitely the party that helped me fine-tune not just what I bring to the people, but understanding how São Paulo influences me to take my sound in different directions. You've gone from receiving a text from Skrillex saying he was inspired by your music to releasing a record together and playing back-to-back together. How has that relationship developed, and what do you each bring out in each other creatively? Sonny heard my stuff online—I think it was an online set—and the following week he FaceTimed me. A few months later, he was here in Brazil and we ended up hitting the studio; later I went to London and spent some time in the studio there too. We naturally became friends, so that ends up being a reflection of that—us playing and releasing stuff. Being in the studio with him is super inspiring because he's a crazy talented artist, honestly, the most talented artist I've ever worked with. He's really into textures and sounds from all over; he works with whatever he's got on hand. I respect that a lot and I think he sees something similar in me. My sound is very rooted in São Paulo, but I also spend a lot of time studying [different] kinds of aesthetics, especially Brazilian ones, and things I can use in my work that are also rooted in my everyday life. I think he digs that, so we end up influencing each other—it all happens naturally. Your latest EP, GÍRIA, feels deeply rooted in São Paulo's sound system culture, but it pulls inspiration from Kingston, San Juan, London and beyond. How do you balance that local specificity with such a wide-ranging sonic curiosity, and does that tension ever feel like a contradiction to you? I understand, on the surface, why people feel all these different places in the EP, but the record is a very local reflection, sonically and conceptually, from the visuals to the aesthetics. Whether it's the sound aesthetics or the visual aesthetic, Brazil is a multicultural and multipolar [country]; there's a lot going on here. Basically, everything throughout the EP is a reflection of my local experience here in São Paulo and my research into Brazilian rhythms, like concepts around the Brazilian language and the codes of where we’re from. For example, on the track "Inna Combination" with Mammazuki: she's a reggaeton and perreo artist, but also part of the sound system culture and the local dancehall scene in SP. But the percussion, the bass, and the actual rhythm of that track—that's the rhythm of "Baião", which comes from the Northeast. So, all that research into the diaspora is also embedded into the EP. Conceptually, it's like each track represents a region. I think it's only natural that when people from outside Brazil hear these styles, they immediately link them to stuff from abroad. I feel like it's just part of the experience, but to me, it's more of a surface-level feeling than something actually trying to be that. One of the things that makes Brazil such a powerhouse—and much of Brazil's beauty—is our contradiction; the contradiction of being Brazilian. Brazil is a place with a ton of political problems; it's a country where that discomfort is almost always there, but at the same time, it's a beautiful place. Stunning nature, multiculturally rich, where the art is just so powerful. The EP is a reflection of everything I experience here in Brazil. If people dive a deeper, they'll understand what this world is about—that all my work is just a reflection of my life here, the diaspora and Brazil.
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