How many more haunted-house synth leads does the Halloween-adjacent EDM calendar actually need? NIVIRO makes a case for at least one more with Paranormal, a track that is as competent as it is predictable. He has been an NCS fixture for years and can clearly build one of these in his sleep, which turns out to be the problem. Spooky theatrical melody, tidy build, a drop that does precisely what the preceding thirty seconds promised, every turn signposted a bar before it lands and every sound pulled from the same seasonal costume box. It will cover a Halloween playlist and a thousand jump-scare compilations, and it will not survive November. NIVIRO has made genuinely good tracks before, which is why the autopilot here reads as a little disappointing instead of merely disposable. There is a version of this with one genuinely strange idea in it that would have been worth keeping around. This is not that version. Competent, seasonal, and gone by the first of the month.
January
Chrome Daydream
Chrome stars, jelly hearts and holographic colour. A nod to the glossy, optimistic graphics of the early web.