Kadhalan means lover in Tamil, and once you know that the whole track rearranges itself around the word. This is Dusky stepping sideways from the UK house and techno they’re known for into something warmer and more diasporic, flipping a South Asian vocal from Nadeem Karim into a deep house roller that sounds like 2am on the good kind of dancefloor. The Loverboy Mix tag is earned; there’s a loose, hip-swinging swagger to the groove that the straighter club edit probably files down. Recorded live from one of their Lab54 pop-ups, it carries a little of that room’s air, the sense of a floor full of people actually moving. Dusky have always been good at this, the smuggling of real feeling and real culture into music built for a basement, going right back to their early Anjunadeep records. The bassline is round and rubbery and does most of the emotional work while the vocal floats on top like steam off a cup. It’s sensual without being corny, which is a hard needle to thread on a track literally called Loverboy. Fifteen years in and these two still sound curious. That’s the rarest thing a dance act can be.
January
Chrome Daydream
Chrome stars, jelly hearts and holographic colour. A nod to the glossy, optimistic graphics of the early web.