Trance with a sense of humour is rarer than it should be, and Esta Si, Esta No has one. The title translates to roughly “this one yes, this one no,” which reads like a shrug set to a pumping tempo, and the track carries that playfulness all the way through, mOat and The Glimmers refusing to take the genre’s usual self-serious euphoria at face value. There is a Spanish vocal snippet doing the yes-no routine over a bassline with actual swing, more rubbery and groove-forward than the purists would strictly sanction. It sits in that modern pocket where trance, tech house and whatever Armada is branding “raw” this quarter all blur into one another, and the blur is the appeal. The Glimmers have been working the Belgian scene for years, and it shows in a breakdown that holds the obvious euphoric payoff back far longer than you expect before letting it rip. It is trance you can smirk to, which is a lane almost nobody bothers working. Bright, cheeky, and a genuinely good reason to check in on the genre again after a few years away.
January
Chrome Daydream
Chrome stars, jelly hearts and holographic colour. A nod to the glossy, optimistic graphics of the early web.