Five on Friday with Ruf Dug

There are few DJs who genuinely resist categorisation without making a point of it. Ruf Dug is one of them.

The Manchester-based selector, producer, label runner and broadcaster has spent years building a musical world that moves between house, dub, street soul, ambient and fourth-world electronics with the easy confidence of someone who has never had much interest in genre as a destination. He runs Ruf Kutz, holds down a fortnightly residency on NTS, and is one of the people behind Rainy Heart, the long-running event series that has always understood something a lot of clubs forget: that a room shapes sound as much as sound shapes a room.

What makes him a natural fit for Five on Friday is not just the breadth of his listening, though that is considerable. It is the quality of attention he brings to it. A Ruf Dug recommendation does not feel like content. It feels like something surfaced from an actual record shelf, an actual conversation, an actual moment of recognition that this particular thing belongs next to that particular other thing.

That sensibility is exactly what this series is for. Every week Five on Friday asks one person from the extended Decoded world to hand over five tracks and say something real about them. No algorithms. No obvious picks. No padding.

This week it is over to Ruf Dug. Five tracks. His reasoning. Make of them what you will.

Loma Suyo – Como Mi Amor

I closed an NTS show with this and the chat immediately wanted the ID, which is usually a good sign. It feels completely handmade and intimate but somehow opens up a massive horizon: voice, nylon guitar, banjo, bass and percussion all moving at their own pace. The whole Paloma album is gorgeous, but this is the one I keep returning to.

Jason Dungan / Johan Carøe – Mornings with Rita

A lovely record built out of the rhythms of ordinary domestic life. This one is so unforced: zither, strings, little machines and tape haze, all quietly reorganising the air in the room. There’s loads of music trying desperately to sound important; this just sounds true.

Agile Experiments – See The Tao In This

It’s only just over three minutes long but contains a whole world. Percussion, low end, Havana street noise and a group of musicians listening very hard to one another. It feels improvised without ever feeling loose. Proper collective music: curious, physical and a little bit uncanny.

ZENA, SLICKnBOBBY – Yekermo Sew

I bloody love everything SLICKnBOBBY are doing at the moment. Here they rework Mulatu Astatke and uncover this deep Ethiopia-Jamaica connection without turning it into a history lesson: space, bass, echo and melody. Ancient and futuristic at the same time, which is about as good as it gets.

Mike Kee – White Cloud Place

Full disclosure: this is the new Ruf Kutz release, made by my old mate Mikey in Australia. I’m including it because I think it’s brilliant, not because I’ve completely lost all sense of shame. Dreamy, slightly wonky deep house with a broken-beat/Detroit pull underneath it. It feels like looking out of an aeroplane window when you’re not quite sure what day it is.

by Damo Red Telephone

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