Resident Advisor's BBC Radio 1 Takeover is the first of its kind to explore a specific theme. Over the next four weeks, sounds exploring technology are at the crux of our curation. Anticipate the full breadth of electronic music pushing the frontiers of innovation: last Saturday, King Britt's Afrofuturist, fully vinyl mix of proto-disco and broken beats inaugurated the series, which will be followed by object blue's experimental sounds inspired by the uncanny valley, with select songs filtered through an AI, deep fake vocal modelling tool on June 11th. There's also DVS1's propulsive techno that mirrors his life's dedication to engineering immersive sound experiences; Zora Jones concludes the month on an eclectic note, zipping through a multi-genre mix rife with dancehall, UK funky, and jersey club—music that's, in her words, "in and of itself innovative."

Meet the four artists we feature in the series and learn about how technology inspires their music-making—not to mention expanding the limits of their productions.

King Britt

Since starting his DJ journey at just five years old, during afternoons spent selecting records for his father's barber salon, King Britt has seemingly explored every avenue of the electronic music scene and industry. As a producer, composer, performer, DJ, label operator and much more, he has absorbed and exuded wisdom from across the spectrum of dance music culture. These days, he distills it all into a University of California lecture course called Blacktronika: Afrofuturism In Electronic Music, using technology, science fiction and the African roots of dance music as a jumping off point for profound and vital topics. In his own words, it's about "the lineage of many of the groundbreaking Black, electronic artists who have been integral but overlooked in the development and commodification of house, techno, drum & bass and experimental music."

The idea of a Black future is central to understanding King Britt. It manifests across all his work, whether in soulful house tracks, his early hip-hop releases or spaced-out explorations as Fhloston Paradigm. He continues to take inspiration from childhood memories of Afrofuturist icon Sun Ra combining innovative music hardware with otherworldly clothing and dance. In his own way, King Britt carries the Afrofuturist baton forward, telling multi-disciplinary stories that connect the past, present and future.

object blue

Since her early days of music making as object blue, the producer's practice has revolved around breaking down existing barriers and norms—how can I challenge what people expect? How can I break the rules? Why do we even have these rules?

The Tokyo-born, Beijing-raised, London resident has taken a global, internet-era set of influences and channelled them into deconstructing club music—techno, electro, glitch and beyond—bending them into alien forms and futuristic soundscapes. As a DJ, whether soundtracking a Vivienne Westwood runway or pummelling a festival stage, object blue adapts the boundless energy of her studio practice to twist those on a dance floor, opening minds until even the wildest left-turns come as no surprise.

Building on long-running themes of randomisation in her music, object blue recently worked with artificial intelligence technology Aimi.fm, feeding her entire discography into the program to create something new. Enter: Figuring, a computer-generated, long-form remake of her compositions. Something at once familiar and totally new, it's the sound of woman and machine in harmonious collaboration.

DVS1

Embodying the Midwest's techno spirit, DVS1 has been living and breathing dance music for over 30 years. From his roots building sound systems and throwing parties in Minneapolis, DVS1 (born Zak Khutoretsky) has grown into one of the worldwide techno scene's leading DJs, regularly spinning extended sets at Berghain, where he is one of the few residents equally comfortable rocking the techno dance floor downstairs or playing house upstairs in Panorama Bar. He's living proof that good things take time, making his big breakthrough almost 20 years into his DJ career. Now, Khutoretsky's skills behind the decks have been perfected to a point few can match.

His craft involves a two-sided relationship to technology, one which simultaneously honours original ways of doing things (his love for playing vinyl, or advocating for no phones on the dance floor, for example) while constantly pushing technology forward. Since 2015, Khutoretsky has been developing a "Wall Of Sound" concept for his events, with the crowd facing an enormous stack of speakers rather than the DJ, creating highly immersive sonic experiences. In 2017, he launched MONOM, a 4D spatial sound venue and studio situated in Berlin's Funkhaus. His most recent project, Aslice, aims to level the playing field between DJs and producers by providing a platform for DJs to pledge a percentage of their gig fees to the artists whose music they play.

Zora Jones

Austrian-born, Montreal-based artist Zora Jones is not the kind of artist whose music you simply listen to. Each release or live performance is presented as part of a bigger conceptual whole; a virtual reality that transcends traditional plains of music, technology and art to encompass them all at once. One example is her debut album Ten Billion Angels, which represents Jones as a CGI tentacle queen. Another is the world-touring, on-and-offline portal she created together with Sinjin Hawke, Fractal Fantasy, which sits somewhere between a video game, audio/visual experience and interactive installation. Sounds confusing? It is. It's part of a mind-bogglingly surreal network of ideas and aesthetics which also includes virtual rave spaces and an imagined artist called Zubotnik.

Sonically, Jones' music is as adventurous as her ideas. It draws from footwork, psychedelic techno and beatless experiments, fusing them into a hyper-detailed rush of sound. As a DJ and live performer, Jones is similarly wide-reaching. Expect to hear high-energy dance floor styles from around this world and others, from UK funky to dancehall and Jersey club.