When Resident Advisor launched in Australia in 2001, the publication's founders sought out to create a website that highlighted outstanding electronic music and nightlife events across local and international scenes. Aside from its editorial arm, RA was also designed to be a platform that could be utilised by all the central players within the electronic music ecosystem—a place where DJs, producers and venues could promote themselves with in-depth profiles, and a home for promoters to share their events with a wider audience. What began as a humble project became a publication that not only regularly featured the most important acts shaping the direction of electronic music but also approached the genre as high art through thoughtful editorial coverage. Over the years, our staff writers, who are now based in Berlin, London, New York and Los Angeles, have remained on the pulse of the global scenes, championing the future of the underground while archiving its essential histories.

Ahead of RA's birthday party next month, we decided to look back on some of the pieces that best defined the publication's 21 years of journalism. To compile this, we have asked our current and former staff members to pick out their favourite pieces over the years. These multimedia pieces centre the diverse cast of artists, scenes and collectives whose cultural production has helped build the nightlife community that we all revel in today. They're also a testament to the fact that contemporary club culture could not have been made possible without the critical contributions of people from the margins of society—from techno-feminists in Berlin to Afro-Portuguese artists in Príncipe—whom we have honoured in the entries below. Read on for 11 of our most memorable reviews, longform features, podcasts and more in chronological order.

Podcast

RA.001 Troy Pierce

Our podcast also debuted in 2006, and RA has since used the platform to highlight some of the most influential DJs of our time. Minus Records boss Troy Pierce kicked off the podcast series with a collection of minimal techno records that, at the time, were relatively unknown. Now, they’re considered classics, and the podcast has become a major part of the RA ecosystem.

Feature

Put Your Hands Up: An Oral History of Detroit’s Electronic Music Festival

In 2010, former editor Todd Burns interviewed more than 50 people—the most ever interviewed for an RA feature—to assemble this oral history of one of the most important music festivals in the United States, Detroit Electronic Music Festival, also known as Movement. To web together this long, dramatic and intricate story, Burns interviewed festival founders, pioneering DJs, local journalists and even Dennis Archer, who served as Detroit's mayor from 1994 to 2001, delivering the kind of piece that the birthplace of techno's biggest festival deserves.

Film

Real Scenes: Berlin

The Real Scenes film series has explored the cultural environs of hyper-local electronic music scenes all over the world. Released in 2011, Real Scenes: Berlin captured a pivotal moment for the German capital's musical development. The city had, in recent years, built a solid reputation for delivering world-class techno at renowned clubs, earning it the title of techno's capital city.

Feature

Seth Troxler: Casual Twists

In this longform feature from 2012, former editor Will Lynch shadows Seth Troxler, who at the time was at the height of his fame. Compiled from the five days Lynch spent with Troxler during Miami Music Week, the piece is an intimate look into the highs and lows of DJ stardom, as well as the dizzying touring schedules that many artists are expected to take on.

Feature

An Alternate History of Sexuality

Over the decades, the mainstreaming of electronic music has played a large role in obfuscating the genre's queer origins. In this 2014 feature, Luis-Manuel Garcia leads with a vital question: "If the roots of electronic music are so sexually diverse, why do today's audiences need to be reminded of it?" Through this long-form piece, Garcia seeks to amend this abridged history, laying out the queer history of electronic music in scenes across Chicago, Detroit, Paris, the UK and more.

Feature

The Ghetto Sound of Lisbon

In the early 2010s, It seemed like every major electronic music publication was trying to get a grasp on the off-kilter blend of Afro-house, kuduro and its close cousin, tarraxinha, that was coming out of Lisbon's Afro-Portuguese communities. This sprawling 2014 feature sees RA's former editor Ryan Keeling travel to Lisbon's housing projects to chart the development of the influential Príncipe crew.

Feature

End of RA Polls

RA Polls launched in 2006 as a means to fill a gap in coverage of the year's best performing electronic music acts. First open only to the site's contributors (and then, in 2008, to the site's readers), the polls allowed the electronic music community to vote on their favourite acts. But a glaring lack of diversity in the list over the years made it clear that the polls were no longer an effective way to capture a multifaceted scene in which many demographics intrinsic to the dance music community were not fairly represented. The RA Polls ended in 2016 with this in mind.

Review

Review: Autechre - NTS Sessions 1-4

In 2018, the legendary UK electronic duo Autechre premiered a whopping eight hours of music over several live sessions on London radio station NTS. The complete work, titled NTS Sessions 1-4, totaled 36 tracks, and RA's former tech editor Mark Smith took on the mammoth task of reviewing it. The record earned an RA Recommends stamp, with Smith describing it as "a pinnacle. It's as if the preceding decades of work were acts of research leading to this point."

Feature

Sex, Techno, Feminism: Inside a New Generation of Queer Parties

White, gay, cis-gendered men have often been the face of queer nightlife. But in the late 2010s, an explosion of parties cropped up around the world that prioritised other queer identities that were previously overlooked—and the experiences got kinkier. Steph Lee's 2019 piece surveyed this new crop of erotic queer events which centered women, trans and nonbinary people, and took readers to scenes across Berlin, Lisbon, Barcelona, New York, Leeds and beyond.

Exchange

RA Exchange: Patrice Rushen

The release of a new Patrice Rushen retrospective album in 2019 called for an interview with the revered vocalist, arranger, writer and instrumentalist. This RA Exchange, led by Zakia Sewell, dives into the storied career of the R&B and jazz artist and features more than a few heart-melting words of wisdom for artists trying to make it in an unforgiving music industry.

Feature

Art of DJing: Avalon Emerson

It’s no question that the Art of DJing is one of RA's most popular flagship series. Through longform interviews and video demonstrations of unique tricks and tips, it offers readers an opportunity to take notes from some of dance music's top players. Elissa Stolman interviewed Avalon Emerson in this notable 2019 feature, which uncovers the American DJ's methodical approach to mixing. Spoiler alert: it includes a lot of live editing.