There is an acid line in Proximus that corkscrews downward like water leaving a sink, and it is pure, uncut 1999. Pairing Mauro Picotto with Bryan Kearney is the kind of booking that makes trance lifers sit up, two generations of the sound in one room, and Proximus plays to both their instincts at once. Picotto brings the hypnotic, riff-as-mantra approach that made Lizard and Komodo survive every fashion cycle thrown at them. Kearney brings the harder, darker edge he has spent the last decade pushing, that psy-adjacent low-end rumble under the melody. Together they land on something properly peak-time, a track built for the hour of the night when a room stops thinking and just surrenders to the sixteenth notes. It is relentless in the specific trance way where the relentlessness is the pleasure, the same four bars tightening and tightening until the release arrives like oxygen. Most modern trance team-ups are two logos shaking hands. This one earned the double name on the label. Proper headcharge material for a dark room and a big rig.
January
Chrome Daydream
Chrome stars, jelly hearts and holographic colour. A nod to the glossy, optimistic graphics of the early web.