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    • DJs From Mars, JD Davis - Just Can't Get Enough
      1 min read

      DJs From Mars, JD Davis - Just Can't Get Enough

      Saw the title Just Can’t Get Enough and braced for either a Depeche Mode cover or a Black Eyed Peas one, and it turns out to be neither exactly. DJs From Mars, an Italian duo who built their name on chaotic mashup bootlegs, team up with vocalist JD Davis for a big, glossy dance record that borrows the famous title and hook energy and runs it through a festival main-stage filter. It’s shameless, all pumping kick and euphoric vocal and a drop engineered for maximum arms-in-the-air. Coming from a mashup act I half-expected something more unhinged and got something surprisingly polished instead, which is either growth or a sign they’ve gone commercial, depending on how you feel about it. It’s fun in a slightly disposable way, the kind of track that’s huge in the moment and gone by the next morning. I enjoyed it and I won’t remember it, and...

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    • Dejector - Run Together (feat. Ella Clayton)
      1 min read

      Dejector - Run Together (feat. Ella Clayton)

      Found this at midnight through the MrSuicideSheep rabbit hole and it kept me up another hour. Run Together pairs Dejector with Ella Clayton for a melodic electronic track that sits somewhere between future bass and something softer, and it caught me off guard with how much it actually feels. Clayton’s vocal is the anchor, a little fragile in a way that reads as real rather than performed, and the production gives it room instead of burying it under maximalist noise the way this style usually does. When the drop finally opens up it’s warm and wide, more sunrise than fireworks. There’s a detuned synth carrying the main melody that wobbles just slightly out of tune in a way I assume is deliberate and love regardless. It’s the kind of track that would soundtrack the emotional climax of a film I’d probably cry at. I don’t have much cynicism to bring...

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    • Pay to the Order Of
      1 min read

      Pay to the Order Of

      Amount left blank. Date left blank. Photo op fully funded. Six smiles, one giant cheque, and the only thing written on it is a promise to write something later. The cameras got what they came for. The line item did not.

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    • York - On The Beach (Magic Marc's Radiomix)
      1 min read

      York - On The Beach (Magic Marc's Radiomix)

      Is there a more summer-holiday trance record than York’s “On The Beach”? Serious question. The original dropped in 2000, built around that instantly recognizable Chris Rea guitar line, and it’s been soundtracking sunburns and cheap package holidays for a quarter century now. This Magic Marc’s Radiomix polishes it up for modern systems without gutting what made it work, which is the whole risk with touching a track this beloved. The Chris Rea sample is still front and center, that wistful little guitar phrase that somehow sounds like the last day of a trip before you’ve even left. Around 1:40 the beat kicks in properly and the nostalgia turns physical; suddenly you’re nineteen again in a field you can’t quite place. Trance takes a lot of flak for this kind of open-hearted directness, and it has never bothered me for a second. It’s cheesy the way a perfect ice cream is...

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    • Cyantific - Call Me
      1 min read

      Cyantific - Call Me

      If you came up on the Hospital Records sound in the 2010s, you already know what a Cyantific track feels like, and Call Me delivers it. This is clean, punchy drum and bass with a vocal hook that lodges immediately and refuses to leave, the kind of track built for a peak-time set when everyone’s already sweating. The bassline is a simple two-note thing that hits like a car door slamming, and everything else in the arrangement gets out of its way. What I like is that it doesn’t overstay; a lot of DnB pads itself out to seven minutes, and this one says its piece and leaves before you’re bored. Cyantific has been a fixture of this sound forever, and it shows in how little he wastes. The vocal had me on the first listen, and I’ve reached for it three more times since, which for a track this...

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    • Chillville Citizens Exclusive Preview - reject modernity, embrace whatever this is 🌳
      1 min read

      Chillville Citizens Exclusive Preview - reject modernity, embrace whatever this is 🌳

      Sunday, 7am, coffee not yet working, and this is the only thing on the internet that met me where I was. Chillhop Music dropped a preview under a title that’s basically a mission statement, “reject modernity, embrace whatever this is,” and whatever this is turns out to be exactly right for a slow morning. It’s the usual chillhop furniture done well: dusty piano loops, a kick that sounds wrapped in a wool sock, vinyl crackle mixed loud enough that you notice it and then forget it. What saves it from being wallpaper is the bass, which actually moves instead of just sitting there holding a root note. There’s a stretch about two-thirds through where the drums cut out and a single Rhodes chord just hangs, and I stopped what I was doing for it. I put this kind of thing on to work and then catch myself not working. That’s...

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    • Reece Rosé, STREETSINEZ - Just Need Ya
      1 min read

      Reece Rosé, STREETSINEZ - Just Need Ya

      This is a proper little earworm and I’m mildly annoyed about it. “Just Need Ya” from Reece Rosé and STREETSINEZ is bouncy, garage-tinged house on NCS, the kind of track engineered to be immediate and absolutely succeeding at it. At 1:18 the beat strips back to just the vocal and a shuffling hi-hat before the bass rolls back in, and that little reset is the hook that got its claws in me. The vocal’s got a UKG lilt to it, all swing and cheek, riding a bassline that skips instead of thudding. STREETSINEZ keeps turning up on these bright house cuts and clearly has a feel for a hook that lands in under thirty seconds. Reece Rosé matches the energy, keeping the whole thing feather-light where a heavier hand would have sunk it. It’s light, it’s fun, and it’s over before it wears out its welcome. Not much to overthink...

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    • 1 min read

      Twenty-Five Years and a Beer Ban

      Twenty-five years ago today, US airspace shut down and 38 planes carrying 6,500 people dropped into Gander, Newfoundland — a town of about ten thousand that wasn’t expecting any of them. The people of Gander emptied their fridges, opened their churches, dragged cots into community halls, and took care of complete strangers for days. They didn’t negotiate terms. They didn’t send an invoice. They just did it, because that’s what you do when your neighbor’s house is on fire. Today, on the anniversary of that, the president of the United States is banning Canadian beer. Canadian rye whisky. Canadian motorcycles. Canadian whey protein. He’s using Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 — the same Depression-era law he dusted off in July — to outright prohibit Americans from buying a beer brewed ninety miles from the border. On September 29 the ban takes effect, and until then those products...

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    • Oden & Fatzo x Noa Milee - You Don't Want To Think About It (Live Session)
      1 min read

      Oden & Fatzo x Noa Milee - You Don't Want To Think About It (Live Session)

      There’s a Defected live session shot in some sun-drenched room and it makes you want to quit your job and learn to DJ badly. Oden & Fatzo have been turning into one of the most fun house acts going, all bouncing basslines and vocal hooks that lodge before the first chorus is done, and “You Don’t Want To Think About It” with Noa Milee is peak them. The live-session format suits it; you can see the thing being built, hands on the gear, Noa Milee’s vocal happening in the room rather than comped together after the fact. At 2:41 the bass drops out entirely and it’s just her voice and a clap for four bars, and the room visibly loses it. It’s feel-good house with no apology in it, the sort of track that turns a kitchen into a small illegal party. The groove does that Oden & Fatzo trick...

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    • Golden Years
      1 min read

      Golden Years

      The retirement plan was a vest. He is 78, he is smiling, and he is the first face you see at the door because the pension was the first thing to leave. The poster behind him sells a beach. His shift ends at six.

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WE COULDN'T SHUT UP ABOUT THESE

Editor's picks

the one we couldn't shut up about

Raise Your Weapon

deadmau5

The transition at 4:00 is the whole point. Coldplay would never.

shoplift it from a friend

The One

Swedish House Mafia · Pharrell

Exactly as big and as dumb as it needs to be. Volume up.

quiet correction

The Grudge (live)

Chilly Gonzales

Electronic doesn't have to mean loud. Eleven minutes, all of them.

first set of four

Ritual Ottawa, Dec 2

Skrillex

Recorded off the booth feed. He played Scary Monsters before it was Scary Monsters.

paper romance

Paper Romance

Groove Armada

Genre-hopping with a new crew of vocalists. It still works.

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