Does the world need another big-room AFROJACK record in 2026? Probably not, and yet “Allein” made me turn it up anyway. AFROJACK has been doing this long enough that the mechanics are second nature — the tension-building filter, the vocal chop teased before the drop, the inevitable four-on-the-floor payoff at 1:05 — and Gil Glaze sands off just enough of the bombast to make it feel current rather than throwback. The German vocal (“allein” means alone) gives it a hooky, slightly melancholy edge that most big-room tracks skip entirely, and it’s the best decision here. The drop itself is more restrained than peak-era AFROJACK — less screeching lead, more bouncy plucked synth — and it’s better for it. This isn’t going to change anyone’s mind about mainstage dance music, and it doesn’t need to; it’s built to work at a festival at sunset with twenty thousand people who don’t care...
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July 20, 2026 at 2:15 PM 1 min read
AFROJACK & Gil Glaze - Allein
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July 20, 2026 at 2:00 PM 4 min read
Deep House vs Tech House, Explained
Deep house vs tech house, explained: listen to the bass. Hummable and looping is tech house, warm and chord-driven is deep house. The rest follows.Read more . . . →Subscribe →Weekly digestSundays. One email. Zero ballads from white guys in beanies. -
July 20, 2026 at 11:14 AM 1 min read
oncor - Seasons Change
Read more . . . →“Seasons Change” is a slow-burn: no huge drop, no fireworks, just a warm chord progression and a vocal that sits somewhere between hopeful and resigned. oncor builds the whole thing on restraint. The production detail is where it wins, with little granular flecks of sound scattered through the mix, a bassline that pulses rather than pounds, and a build around 2:15 that swells and then, instead of exploding, just gently opens up. It’s the musical equivalent of the exact moment summer starts tipping into autumn, which I assume is the point. The vocal never pushes; it stays almost conversational, like someone talking themselves into being okay with a change they didn’t ask for. I put it on twice in a row and the second pass landed harder than the first, which almost never happens with something this understated. This is headphones music, late-evening music, the stuff you put on when...
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July 20, 2026 at 10:49 AM
1 min read
Weekend two is the one that actually matters
Read more . . . →Weekend one wrapped yesterday and your feed is already unbearable, full of drone shots and people crying at the mainstage like they invented feelings. Fine. But everyone who actually knows Tomorrowland knows the second weekend is the better one. The DJs have shaken off the rust, the crowd skews more heads and fewer influencers doing a bit for the camera, and the set that flopped on Friday the 17th gets quietly fixed by Friday the 24th. Boom, Belgium goes again this Friday, and here are the five tracks I want the mainstage to earn. 1. Hardwell - Spaceman Hardwell headlines the mainstage on the Friday of weekend two, which means Spaceman is coming whether you like it or not, and the truth is you’ll like it. Those first synth stabs still detonate a field of 60,000 people on contact, and the man has been dining out on that hook since...
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July 20, 2026 at 9:32 AM 1 min read
AC Slater x Lock 'N' Load - Blow Ya Mind
Read more . . . →That “blow ya mind” vocal is a rave relic, and AC Slater dragging it into 2026 is exactly the kind of chaos I’m here for. This flips Lock ‘N’ Load’s old anthem into a bass-house weapon — all rubbery low-end and a beat that swings harder than the original ever did. The drop at 1:14 is filthy in the best way, a growling bassline that struts rather than stomps, and the nostalgia of that vocal hook against the modern production is a genuinely fun collision. AC Slater’s whole Night Bass thing has always been about this: house music with the attitude of garage and the weight of dubstep, and “Blow Ya Mind” is a textbook example. It doesn’t overthink itself. The vocal is the hook, the bassline is the point, and everything else gets out of the way. I had a stupid grin on my face by the second drop....
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July 20, 2026 at 7:04 AM
1 min read
Poilievre Blew a 20-Point Lead, Then Called His Best People Liberals
Read more . . . →At the Calgary Stampede this month, Pierre Poilievre stood up and celebrated a BC Conservative leadership win over what he called “Liberal lobbyists from out East.” The men he was sneering at weren’t Liberals. Kory Teneycke ran Doug Ford’s campaigns and worked for Stephen Harper. Nick Kouvalis and Anthony Koch have spent years electing Conservatives. Their actual crime was telling Poilievre the truth last spring: that Trump’s trade war, not Justin Trudeau, was the thing that would decide the 2025 election. He didn’t want to hear it. He blew a lead of more than twenty points, finished with 144 seats, and handed Mark Carney the keys. So naturally, a year later, he’s on a stage at a rodeo calling the people who were right about him traitors. What followed was exactly what you’d expect. Days of his own former staffers turning on him in public. Caroline Elliott — a candidate...
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July 19, 2026 at 8:15 PM 1 min read
P Money & Whiney - New Life
Read more . . . →Putting a grime MC over drum and bass shouldn’t be this seamless, but P Money and Whiney make “New Life” sound inevitable. P Money’s delivery is all sharp consonants and forward momentum, and Whiney gives him a rolling Hospital-style beat with a bassline that’s deep and clean rather than aggressive, so the bars have room to breathe. The energy is relentless. P Money doesn’t so much ride the beat as chase it, and there’s a moment around 1:40 where the drums drop out under a bar and then slam back in exactly on his punchline. It’s celebratory without being soft; the whole thing has this chin-up, keep-moving spirit that the title promises. Grime and DnB have always been cousins, and this is a reminder of how well they share a room. Whiney’s production stays out of the way when it needs to and takes over when it can, which is...
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July 19, 2026 at 3:32 PM 1 min read
Photek - 30 Seconds Out
Read more . . . →Photek disappearing for years and then dropping something this surgical is exactly on brand for a man who once made drum and bass sound like a sniper cleaning his rifle. “30 Seconds Out” is all tension and negative space. The drums are mixed so dry and so precise you could count the individual hits, and there’s a stretch around 1:40 where he pulls almost everything out except a single tom pattern and lets it hang there long enough to make you nervous. Nobody builds pressure like this anymore. The whole scene got louder and busier while he was gone, and he’s come back doing the opposite, proving restraint still hits harder than a wall of sound. The bass doesn’t roar, it clicks and slides, more felt in your sternum than heard. I played it twice back to back just to catch what the second half was doing under the surface....
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July 19, 2026 at 11:07 AM 1 min read
SILK x Emie - DAYDREAM
Read more . . . →“DAYDREAM” opens with a plucked arpeggio that could have been lifted straight from 2010-era Armada, and I mean that as a compliment: this is trance that knows exactly what it is and commits fully. SILK and Emie build toward a drop at 1:30 that hits with the big, gated, emotional synth stab the genre lives and dies on, topped with a vocal reaching for the rafters. There’s zero irony here, no attempt to modernise or apologise for the euphoria, and after years of trance trying to be tech-adjacent and cool it’s genuinely refreshing to hear something just go for the feeling. The breakdown in the middle strips back to piano and vocal before the second drop rebuilds the whole cathedral. It’s the kind of track that finds you at 3am at a festival when you’re tired and emotional and it undoes you completely. Trance snobs will call it obvious. The...
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July 19, 2026 at 7:49 AM 1 min read
Vicetone - Nevada (Dubstep Remix)
Read more . . . →Somebody took Vicetone’s “Nevada,” a track that soundtracked roughly nine thousand gaming montages back in 2016, and dragged it into a dark alley. This dubstep flip keeps Cozi Zuehlsdorff’s vocal mostly intact through the verse and then obliterates the drop, swapping the original’s shiny festival lift for a filthy half-time wobble. It shouldn’t work — the source is pure sunshine and the remix is pure grime — and yet the contrast is exactly why it does. Hearing that innocent topline lead straight into a bassline this rude is legitimately funny the first time through. The remixer resists the urge to bury the melody, so the nostalgia hit still lands a half-second before the floor gives out. I have a soft spot for edits that take a beloved song and rough it up without disrespecting it, and this one threads it. Whether it improves on the original honestly depends on how...
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