If you’ve spent any time in the NCS corner of YouTube, Netrum and Halvorsen are practically furniture by now, and “Glowing” is them doing the bright, melodic thing they’ve gotten excellent at. This is copyright-free music, a category people love to sneer at, and the best of it has more craft than the sneering allows. “Glowing” is one of the good ones. It rides a plucky, feel-good lead and a vocal that stays just this side of saccharine, and the drop opens up into something genuinely warm rather than just loud. Halvorsen’s fingerprints are all over the topline; he’s got a knack for melodies that sound like the good part of a memory. There’s a key change going into the final chorus that I did not see coming and grinned at like an idiot. It’s optimistic music, and it earns the feeling instead of faking it. Sometimes you just want something that sounds like the sun coming up, and this is that.
January
Chrome Daydream
Chrome stars, jelly hearts and holographic colour. A nod to the glossy, optimistic graphics of the early web.