Lizard is more than 25 years old now and still sounds like it could close out a festival without breaking a sweat. Mauro Picotto wrote one of the defining riffs of the classic-trance era, that hypnotic acid line coiling over and over until it stops reading as a melody and starts reading as a state of mind. This version keeps the Luvstruck DNA front and centre and simply lets the thing breathe on a modern system. There is a reason the riff survived the genre going out of fashion, getting openly mocked for a decade, then slowly becoming cool again: it was always built on hypnosis rather than on any sound that could date. Picotto was making peak-time minimalism before the phrase meant anything to anyone. I have a complicated relationship with trance nostalgia and a low tolerance for cash-ins, but this is the genuine artifact. Stick it on and feel 1999 reach back through the speakers for you.
January
Chrome Daydream
Chrome stars, jelly hearts and holographic colour. A nod to the glossy, optimistic graphics of the early web.