Cartoon & Artino - Ultraviolet

I did not expect to feel anything from a track with a name this edgelord, and then the second half knocked the wind out of me anyway. Ultraviolet is Cartoon and Artino meeting in the melodic drum and bass lane, which is a slight surprise coming from Cartoon, whose biggest moment was a melodic NCS anthem that soundtracked a million gaming montages. Here the montage energy gets traded for something with real weight underneath it. The track builds like a pop song, a proper vocal with a proper topline, and you brace for the usual tidy future-bass drop. Instead the tempo kicks into a liquid DnB roll, the drums skip and the bass goes warm and deep, and the emotional build pays off in motion rather than spectacle. That switch is the whole trick and it works because the first half genuinely sells the song part. There is a counter-melody on the second drop, a little descending figure, that I keep humming hours later with no idea what it is from. For a pairing I would have bet on sounding like an NCS compilation, this has a surprising amount of soul in it. The kind of crossover tune I would hand to someone who still thinks DnB is only noise.

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