Arcando & Charlotte Haining - Release Me (Drum & Bass Edit)

Charlotte Haining has one of those voices that producers fight over for good reason, because she can sell heartbreak and euphoria in the same breath, and Arcando hands her a beat that lets her do both. This is the drum and bass edit, which means the emotional build you’d expect from a Monstercat melodic track suddenly gets legs and starts sprinting. I’m usually wary of the “sad vocal over fast drums” formula because it’s been run into the ground by a thousand anonymous producers chasing a sync placement. This one survives because Haining is actually committed to the lyric, and the drop doesn’t abandon the feeling she set up, it just gives it somewhere to run. The synth work in the back half has a glassy brightness that I kept rewinding to catch. It’s not reinventing anything and it doesn’t need to. Sometimes you want a track that knows exactly what it is, executes it cleanly, and leaves you a little wrecked in a good way. I caught myself mouthing the hook on the second listen, which is the tell that something got under my skin.

Buy / stream this track →