Deck 10

Red Bull Radio launched Deck 10, a monthly program on the third Tuesday hosted by Naima Limdighr and Keno Mescher. The idea is simple: cover rap and electronic scenes away from the major cities, the sounds and people nobody else is really paying attention to.

The first episode heads to Frankenland, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, where Naima meets LACA, an underground rap legend with decades behind him, and Kuchemann, a newcomer working in that same space. They’re sitting in someone’s living room talking about what it means to make music in places with thin infrastructure, how the dialect shapes your sound, how you build a scene when you’re not in a metropolis. It’s the kind of conversation that doesn’t happen in magazine profiles.

I have a photo somewhere of me and Tereza from years back, both of us stuffed with burgers, Leni in the frame too. Tereza became someone I’d forget about until stumbling across her name again. Now she’s the one picking the best club track of each month for the program. It’s a small thing but it’s the kind of discovery that makes a show work—someone you half-remembered turns out to be exactly the person who should be there.

Modselektors Gernot talks about the turning point in his career, and Nick Höppner’s involved too. It’s a solid lineup, the kind that makes sense if you know anything about electronic music in Europe and who’s been doing it the longest.

The whole thing feels necessary. Germany has underground music culture that sprawls across small towns and regional scenes that never make it into international coverage. A show that actually documents that, that treats provincial scenes as serious, sounds like something that should have existed ages ago.