Illyus & Barrientos have been a reliable Toolroom export for years, the kind of duo who turn up with a vocal house cut that just works and never asks for much credit. “Right Here” keeps that streak going, pairing a warm, soulful MALU vocal with a groove that splits the difference between proper house and tech house. It’s got more heart than the average peak-time tool, which is exactly why it stands out. The vocal carries real feeling, that yearning, reach-for-someone energy, and the production gives it room instead of burying it under a wall of percussion. I appreciate house records that remember the genre came from soul and disco, not just a drum machine and a side-chain. There’s a swing to this that makes you want to move rather than just nod along. It’d sit beautifully in a sunset set, the moment a festival crowd softens up and starts...
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June 17, 2026 at 11:07 AM 1 min read
Illyus & Barrientos, MALU - Right Here
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June 17, 2026 at 10:16 AM
1 min read
Raw hardstyle's new wave is who you should actually be scared of
Read more . . . →Everyone talks about the legends. Nobody warns you about the kids. Raw hardstyle’s younger crew has spent the last couple of years making the screech kick nastier than it has any right to be, and they’re all over the Defqon.1 undercard this year. Three of them, loud. 1. Rooler - BOSS Rooler builds drops like he’s actively trying to get the stage shut down. BOSS is two minutes of menace and one kick that sounds like a building coming down on schedule. Perfect. 2. Vasto - The New Sound Vasto’s whole thing is making the raw kick groove instead of just punch, and The New Sound is the cleanest example of it. Funky and brutal at once, which shouldn’t be possible but here we are. 3. Killshot - One Shot Killshot has quietly been one of the most reliable raw producers going, and One Shot is him deciding to stop...
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June 17, 2026 at 7:10 AM 1 min read
Nico Szabo & Aske Izan - Paranoid
Read more . . . →Anjunadeep continues its unbeaten streak of making me want to move to a city I can’t afford. Paranoid from Nico Szabo and Aske Izan is exactly the kind of sophisticated after-hours deep house the label has spent over a decade perfecting. It’s hypnotic without being boring, riding a groove that slowly tightens its grip while these moody restless synths circle overhead. The title fits, because there’s a tension running through the whole thing that never fully resolves, which is what keeps you locked in for the full runtime. Anjunadeep tracks live or die on atmosphere and this one builds a genuinely immersive one, the sort of record that works at 1am in a dark club or 8am watching the sun come up. Szabo and Izan clearly understand the assignment, leaving plenty of room for the groove to breathe instead of cluttering it with noise. Deep house this patient takes real...
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June 17, 2026 at 6:39 AM
1 min read
The Manosphere Recruiter Got a White House Number
Read more . . . →Here’s the part of the Barron Trump dating-advice story nobody wants to say out loud: the campaign did this on purpose. Trump handed his youngest son the job of pulling in young male voters, and the pipeline ran straight through Andrew Tate — a guy under human-trafficking charges in Romania and facing four women in a UK rape lawsuit this month. Tate’s move was to send Justin Waller, who calls himself the “third brother” to the Tates and teaches that a woman’s only born value is how she looks. That’s who got handed a White House family number. Not a tabloid footnote. A hire. Waller’s actual pitch is “one-sided monogamy” — a man keeps several women, the woman keeps one man. That’s not an edgy podcast opinion you argue about over beers. It’s the worldview of the men he calls his brothers, the ones currently answering trafficking charges, and the...
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June 16, 2026 at 7:05 PM 1 min read
Gabriel & Dresden x Blake.08 - Velour
Read more . . . →Gabriel & Dresden have been making grown-up dance music since most of today’s festival headliners were in grade school, and “Velour” on Anjunadeep proves they still know exactly how to build a long, patient groove. This is progressive house in the truest sense, where the reward comes from the slow climb rather than a fireworks drop. The track lives up to its name, soft and plush, all rounded basslines and pads that wrap around you like the fabric it’s named after. Linking with Blake.08 keeps it from sounding like a nostalgia act, adding a fresher edge to the duo’s veteran instincts. I respect how much faith it puts in the listener’s attention span. Nothing here is rushed, and that restraint is the flex. You don’t make music this confident without a couple decades of reading rooms. Best enjoyed with the lights low and the volume up, ideally on a system...
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June 16, 2026 at 6:23 PM 1 min read
Bad Company UK - Planet Dust (Latte Remix)
Read more . . . →Bad Company UK are drum and bass royalty, and Planet Dust is one of those tracks that helped define what heavy neurofunk could sound like back when half the people reading this were toddlers. So a Latte remix of it is a big swing, and Latte mostly nails it. The original’s menace is still there in the DNA, but Latte drags it into a modern, surgical kind of heaviness that the current dancefloor actually wants. The reese bass gets this updated grit that would have melted a 2002 sound system into slag. What I respect is that the remix doesn’t try to erase the original’s identity to prove a point. It honors the source while still hitting like something made this year. UKF putting it on the channel makes sense because this is exactly the lineage they’ve documented for years. Old gods, new hands. If you’ve never heard the original,...
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June 16, 2026 at 3:26 PM
4 min read
Liquid vs Neurofunk: One Is Self-Care, One Is a Threat
Liquid vs neurofunk: same 170 BPM, opposite nervous system. The dnb explainer for anyone who can't tell the hug from the threat.Read more . . . →Get the tee →Support the blogLooks like Helvetica. Sounds like a closing argument. -
June 16, 2026 at 2:43 PM 1 min read
BUJA (BR) - Hysteria
Read more . . . →Second Dirtybird entry in the batch, and BUJA keeps the Brazilian tech house pipeline flowing with Hysteria. BUJA has been one of the more exciting names coming out of Brazil’s bass house and tech house scene, and Dirtybird is the perfect home for the kind of weird bouncy energy he trades in. Hysteria is built around a groove that wobbles and bounces in that classic Dirtybird way, the sort of low-end pressure that makes a dancefloor do something deeply undignified. There’s a playfulness to it that keeps the heaviness fun instead of grim, which is the whole Dirtybird ethos in one track. The bassline does most of the talking, rubbery and infectious, while the percussion keeps everything skipping along underneath. This is festival-at-2pm-in-the-sun music, the kind of track that turns a field of strangers into one crowd. BUJA understands that tech house is supposed to be fun, not a test...
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June 16, 2026 at 2:22 PM 1 min read
DJ PUMA - LOVESICK
Read more . . . →NCS is a copyright-free machine, so most of what lands on the channel is functional more than memorable, music made to sit under Twitch streams without getting anyone struck. DJ PUMA’s “LOVESICK” actually rises above the pile. It’s a tight, bouncy house cut with a vocal chop that gets its hooks in fast and a bassline that struts more than it should for a free download. There’s a real sense of someone enjoying themselves behind the desk here, not just filling a content quota. The drop is simple and effective, the kind of thing that works whether you’re actually on a dancefloor or just need a lift on a grey afternoon. I have a complicated relationship with NCS, because the whole no-copyright thing has flooded the world with disposable EDM, but every so often a producer uses that reach to actually break through. This feels like one of those. Catchy...
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June 16, 2026 at 2:00 PM
1 min read
Where The Warmth Actually Comes From
Read more . . . →Not the DJ’s transitions — the literal fire coming off the platter. Gather round, it’s the warmest thing in the set.
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