“SUFFOCATE” is darker than most of what NCS puts out, and that’s exactly why it works. Papa Khan builds this around a claustrophobic, mid-tempo bass groove and a vocal that sounds genuinely strained — fitting for a track with that title — and the result has a menace the label’s gaming-stream catalogue usually sands off. The drop at 1:24 doesn’t go big, it goes tight and low, a compressed snarl of bass that feels like the walls closing in rather than opening up. I respect the restraint; the easy move would have been a festival-sized lead, and Papa Khan resists it. There’s a metallic percussion loop running under the second half that adds a real sense of unease, like something mechanical breathing in the corner. This is copyright-free music you could actually score a tense scene with, which is not a sentence I get to write often about NCS. It...
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July 23, 2026 at 3:39 PM 1 min read
Papa Khan - SUFFOCATE
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July 23, 2026 at 11:14 AM 1 min read
Matt Pridgyn, Pontifexx - Hero
Read more . . . →Big, dumb, and completely irresistible — “Hero” knows exactly what it is. Proximity built its whole channel on this flavour of anthemic electro, and Matt Pridgyn and Pontifexx have delivered a textbook example: a soaring vocal about being someone’s hero, a build that telegraphs the drop from a mile off, and then a drop at 1:12 that lands with all the subtlety of a firework in a phone booth. The lead synth is pure serrated euphoria, the kind that was everywhere around 2015 and has quietly come back into fashion. I’m a sucker for it and I refuse to be embarrassed. What keeps it from being pure nostalgia bait is the vocal performance, which is genuinely committed — no autotuned detachment, just full-throated corn served straight. The second half throws in a half-time switch I didn’t see coming and it’s the best eight bars in the track. This won’t win...
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July 23, 2026 at 10:49 AM
1 min read
The techno stage doesn't care that you're on holiday
Read more . . . →The techno tent at Tomorrowland is a strange thing to walk into after the mainstage. There’s no confetti and no vocalist begging you to put your hands up, and the drops aren’t telegraphed forty-five seconds in advance. Just a relentless grey kick and a room full of people staring at the floor in bliss. It’s the least Instagrammable corner of the whole site and, on the right night, the best one. Weekend two lands tomorrow. Here’s what that room sounds like this year. 1. Eli Brown x HI-LO - Pyramid Rave Oliver Heldens moonlighting as HI-LO next to Eli Brown, and the result is peak-time techno with a genuinely evil acid line. It’s built for exactly one purpose, which is a festival tent at 1am, and it does that job with zero subtlety and total confidence. 2. HI-LO - The Answer (Oliver Heldens Edit) Take the old ATB trance classic,...
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July 23, 2026 at 7:49 AM 1 min read
Seven Lions - Breaking Me
Read more . . . →Seven Lions has been doing the melodic-dubstep-meets-trance thing for so long that it’s easy to take him for granted, and then a track like “Breaking Me” reminds you why the lane exists in the first place. It opens gentle, all breathy vocal and reverb, and you brace for the drop, but he holds it, letting the tension coil for a full minute before the bass finally tears in around 1:20 with those signature detuned growls layered under a soaring lead. That contrast is his entire signature: the pretty and the heavy sharing the same bar, neither one apologising. The emotional-uplift stuff can tip into cheese fast, and he flirts with the line here without falling over it, mostly because the drop actually has teeth. There’s a second breakdown where the vocal gets chopped into a rhythmic stutter that I didn’t see coming. Festival-built and unashamedly big, the kind of track...
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July 23, 2026 at 6:48 AM
1 min read
They Put a Clock-In App on the People Who Defend You
Read more . . . →Public defenders are the people who stand between a broke stranger and a cage, for a salary that wouldn’t cover a Brooklyn one-bedroom. Brooklyn Defender Services just spent days on a picket line to claw back a little dignity, and their contract fight ended in a tentative deal on Tuesday. The Bronx Defenders are set to walk on July 27. Not over some fortune. Over a tracking app that makes them clock in and out like they’re suspected of skimming the register, and over a probation period where management can fire a new hire “for any reason.” Sit with “for any reason.” These are the exact people who spend every working hour arguing that “for any reason” is how power grinds down somebody who can’t fight back — no charge that has to stick, just a decision handed down from above. And their own bosses, at a legal-aid nonprofit, want...
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July 22, 2026 at 8:15 PM 1 min read
MatricK - Devotion
Read more . . . →“Devotion” is the kind of track that rewards patience, which makes it the odd one out on a label better known for detonations. MatricK builds this around a hypnotic, driving groove closer to a progressive-house pulse than a mainstage explosion, and it’s better for the discipline. The drop at 1:40 doesn’t blow up so much as unfold — a rolling bassline and a shimmering lead that build pressure gradually instead of dumping it all at once. There’s a genuinely hypnotic quality to how the main motif repeats and slowly mutates over four minutes; I stopped noticing time passing about halfway through, which is the highest compliment I can pay a track like this. It works as well at home on headphones as it would deep in a DJ set at 2am, and that flexibility is rare in this corner of dance music. The restraint is the whole appeal — in...
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July 22, 2026 at 4:11 PM 1 min read
Benny L & Cleveland Watkiss - Metaphors
Read more . . . →Benny L makes some of the hardest, most weaponised jump-up DnB going, all air-raid basslines and no mercy. Cleveland Watkiss is a jazz vocalist and one of the original jungle MCs, a proper piece of the music’s history. On paper they’ve got no business on the same record. On “Metaphors” that history and that horsepower actually meet: the vocal winds through the intro with real warmth before the bass drops in around 0:50 and turns the whole thing into a warehouse. What I love is that the bass doesn’t flatten the vocal, it converses with it. Watkiss floats over the top of the carnage like he’s done this ten thousand times, which he has. There’s a switch-up in the second half where the drums go double-time and the whole thing lifts off. It’s rowdy and soulful at once, which almost never happens because most producers pick a lane. This picks...
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July 22, 2026 at 3:32 PM 1 min read
Ian Redman - Rave It
Read more . . . →“Rave It” does not have a single subtle bone in its body, and thank god for that. Ian Redman turns in a proper Revealed-style banger — a pumping, festival-primed beat, a chopped vocal barking the title, and a drop at 1:08 that’s built for a field full of people losing their minds at midnight. Revealed has a house style and this fits it like a glove: high energy, big hooks, zero patience for anyone who wants nuance. The bassline on the drop has a satisfying elastic snap, and there’s a rave stab buried in the second half that’s a direct line back to early-‘90s hardcore, which I always appreciate. This isn’t the track you put on to impress your music-snob friends; it’s the one you put on at 11pm when the pre-drinks need a kick and everyone’s ready to be ridiculous. On that job it’s flawless. Ian Redman isn’t a...
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July 22, 2026 at 2:00 PM 4 min read
deadmau5: The Troll Who Took EDM Seriously
deadmau5 is a mouse-headed Twitter troll, sure. He's also one of the most serious producers in EDM. 'Strobe' settles the argument.Read more . . . →Get the tee →Support the blogWhat if your laundry was also a personality? -
July 22, 2026 at 12:31 PM 1 min read
Bishu - FADEAWAY
Read more . . . →“FADEAWAY” is built around a vocal hook that’s genuinely sad, a lyric about someone slipping away that could soundtrack a breakup, and then the drop reframes all that melancholy as something you can move to. Bishu has been quietly reliable for years and this is a clean reminder why. The production is glossy without being sterile; there’s a plucked synth line in the verses that gives it a heartbeat before the bass takes over. Around 1:30 the drop hits with a growl that’s more melodic-dubstep than straight bass, wobbly but tuneful, sitting right under the vocal instead of stomping on it. This is the sweet spot a lot of big-room electronic aims for and misses: emotional enough to mean something, heavy enough to actually hit. I’ve caught myself humming the topline away from the track, which is always the sign a hook did its job. Polished, a little heartbroken, and...
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