This is music for walking somewhere you probably should not be going. CHROME//REFLECT drops One True God into midtempo mode, that heavy, stomping half-speed pocket between dubstep’s weight and techno’s march, and it suits the duo’s whole dystopian-robot aesthetic perfectly. They have always built tracks like scenes from a film that does not exist, masked and faceless and leaning all the way into the cyber dread, and EDDIE leans in right alongside them. Midtempo only works when it feels like a genuine threat, and this one does, each hit landing like a boot coming down on metal. It is less a dance track than a march toward something ominous with the city on fire somewhere behind it. Monstercat has been steadily stacking its roster with this darker, grimier sound lately, and tracks like this are why that bet keeps paying off. Headphones on, the whole street turns into a set piece from a better movie than the one you are actually living in.
January
Chrome Daydream
Chrome stars, jelly hearts and holographic colour. A nod to the glossy, optimistic graphics of the early web.