MediaDiet: Richard Akingbehin

Feb 11, 2025

Richard Akingbehin is a cool, calm, record collector… and so much more.

Richard Akingbehin is a British-Nigerian artist, curator and DJ living in Berlin. He goes by the DJ name Richard Akingbehin because he needs no other name.

Richard was kind enough to take time out of his day as the co-founder of Berlin radio station - and community hotspot – Refuge Worldwide to chat to us for the 13th issue of COMMPRESS: MediaDiet.

Dip down below for an honest man’s take on his daily struggle with screen time, his constant search for new songs and, ultimately, a life that lives and breathes music.

Wake up

I am regrettably even worse than the people who wake up and directly check my phone in the morning because I also do it a couple of times during the night: I wake up, check emails, check Instagram, reply to some people living in different time zones, maybe scan the front page of BBC news and then fall back asleep. I don’t even know why I do it, because what could be so urgent that I need to see it at 4am?

Sometimes when I open my phone there is a video playing from the night before and it starts directly on loud and wakes up my girlfriend. I have tried using specific apps to control this relentless urge to check my phone, but they don’t really work for me. So, you could say it’s a work in progress.

Morning

In the morning I either cycle or take the train/bus to work, and all journeys are almost always with headphones on.

Today it was the bus.

I listen to a lot of radio shows from the radio station where I work (Refuge Worldwide) which has pretty much totally replaced me just listening to music for fun. Either that or maybe I'm scanning the Bandcamp app or Spotify playlists for music for my DJ sets.

Nowadays it’s very rare that I will just put on an album purely for enjoyment… which is quite sad to be honest because you start working in music because you love music and then, at some point, you’re so deep in it that your whole relationship with music becomes functional and professional.

Music aside, I also sometimes enjoy podcasts in the morning, especially when I'm travelling on an early flight and want to sleep. It’s normally interviews with DJs, artists or music professionals. A few of my favourites I’m subscribed to are RA Exchange and Weekly (by Telekom Electronic Beats).

I will often listen to the same podcast two or three times because I fell asleep during it, but that’s intentional and not a reflection on the quality of the podcast!

Afternoon

My day today, like most days, is spent listening to our own radio station while working. If it’s a talk show on the radio I will change to one of the more music-based shows usually and come back to it later, so I can concentrate on the work better. Generally I find music without any lyrics is best for working.

I will probably check Resident Advisor’s home page once or twice to see if there is any big music news, and I have a few newsletters that land in my inbox, but I normally don’t get past the first couple paragraphs, I just absorb the title and intro paragraphs to know what the general narrative is and then move on – maybe if it’s really fascinating, I’ll come back to read it in the evening.

Evening

In the evening, if we’re home (as today), me and my girlfriend will normally have a chill dinner together – with no phones present at the table – then sit on the sofa and put something on the projector. At which point, I either fall asleep or will take out my phone or laptop and start to consume the chunks of media that were a bit too big for daytime, while a movie plays in the background. It is usually some articles on Resident Advisor, BBC News or Reddit threads. I used to read Twitter a lot too, but it has turned into a cesspit of right-wing nonsense.

Reddit has become a favourite place of mine to see what the world is thinking about certain topics, sometimes Discord too. Those sorts of forums remind me of the pre-social media era of online music conversation and I love that it’s a bit less about who you are and more about what you have to say. Although, I don’t really say anything; I just consume other people’s opinions to pass time and so that I have interesting small talk to make at the next dinner party.

When I am travelling to DJ (which has been a lot in the past couple of years) my evenings will also include some preparation time scrolling Bandcamp, or record store websites to try and find new music. I’m constantly searching. It’s that or listening to music I already own to remind me of how it sounds.

Richard’s Picks & Recs

SCREEN TIME:

I have a notification telling me when I’ve been on Instagram for 30 minutes and I often get it popping up before I’m out of bed. Oh dear.

SUBSCRIBED TO:

Substacks such as First Floor and The Politics of Dancing. Netflix and Apple TV accounts for background entertainment and short-haul airlines where there’s no screen.

Also, podcasts such as Not A Diving and Ways To Change The World.