Put this on at the gym and ended up doing an extra set I hadn’t scheduled. Believe In is unapologetic uplifting trance, the genre everyone insists died in 2008 and that keeps selling out arenas anyway. Caroline Roxy delivers exactly the soaring, slightly corny vocal this music demands, and the moment the supersaw lead kicks in you either surrender or you were never the right audience for it. There’s a breakdown that strips right back to piano and voice for a long stretch, long enough that you start to miss the kick, and then it returns like a wave you watched building from a mile off. Anyone going by Trancemaster Krause has clearly decided exactly what he is in this life, and I respect the total commitment. It’s euphoric in a slightly embarrassing, completely effective way, roughly the musical equivalent of a hug from someone much taller than you. I played it again the second it finished.
January
Chrome Daydream
Chrome stars, jelly hearts and holographic colour. A nod to the glossy, optimistic graphics of the early web.