NCS gets dismissed as the copyright-free background music factory for Twitch streamers, and that reputation is half-earned, but every so often something genuinely good slips through the gold-rush gates and “KYOTO” is one of them. HESTER builds this around a hooky, slightly off-kilter house groove with just enough bass-house grit to keep it from being polite. The title and the little melodic motif gesture at something East Asian without turning into a cheap pentatonic cliché, which is a trap a lesser producer would’ve walked straight into. What I like is the patience. It doesn’t dump everything in the first thirty seconds the way so much streaming-bait does, it lets the groove establish itself and trusts you to stick around. The drop has a satisfying physical snap, the kind that makes you nod before you’ve decided to. For a free download from a channel built on algorithmic reach, it’s got more personality than it has any right to. I went in expecting wallpaper and got something I’d actually queue on purpose. Whoever HESTER is, I’ll be keeping an eye out, because a real ear made this and it shows in every bar.
January
Chrome Daydream
Chrome stars, jelly hearts and holographic colour. A nod to the glossy, optimistic graphics of the early web.