I didn’t expect to be this into a hard dance VIP on a weeknight, and yet here we are, three plays deep. Dani Thorne has spent the last stretch reinventing herself as a genuinely hard-hitting techno and hard-dance artist, and The Afters in this VIP form is the most convincing evidence yet that the pivot is real and not a celebrity-DJ cosplay. The original already had legs; this version straps a rocket to them. The tempo is up, the kick hits like a battering ram, and the whole thing has that euphoric-but-brutal quality the best hard dance lives for, where your legs are screaming and your face is grinning at the same time. There’s a breakdown that teases a softer melodic turn before the track remembers it has somewhere to be and slams back in. It landed on Dim Mak, a natural home for this kind of maximal energy. Dani Thorne isn’t messing around anymore, and I wouldn’t bet against whatever she does next.
January
Chrome Daydream
Chrome stars, jelly hearts and holographic colour. A nod to the glossy, optimistic graphics of the early web.