Why does the nastiest bass house so often come out of the least serious labels? Voltage lands on Dim Mak, Steve Aoki’s shop, and MNK with MasN Kutcher keep it stripped to the essentials, one mean little riff and a kick that flat refuses to quit. The track lives in that sweet overlap where house swing meets dubstep attitude, enough groove to actually dance to and enough snarl to feel slightly dangerous doing it. The lead is the hook, a distorted stab that worms its way in and sets up shop, the kind of riff you catch yourself imitating under your breath hours after it ends. Dim Mak has always had a taste for the slightly obnoxious, the big and brash and unbothered, and Voltage sits right at home in that tradition without ever feeling like a retread. It knows precisely how much is enough and then stops there, which is rarer than it should be in a genre addicted to piling on. Short, nasty, and perfectly tuned for the exact ninety seconds of a set where the whole room decides to stop being cool about it.
January
Chrome Daydream
Chrome stars, jelly hearts and holographic colour. A nod to the glossy, optimistic graphics of the early web.