Simon Gregory - Feedback

Trance is supposed to be embarrassing and this track knows it. Feedback showed up on the Anjunabeats channel, which is the label that spent twenty years making grown adults cry at 138bpm and refuses to say sorry for any of it, and Simon Gregory sounds completely at home there. The build is long and shameless, a slow climb of layered synths that keeps adding voices until the breakdown strips it down to a single held chord and a kick you can feel in your teeth. Then it lifts. There is no clever trick to why this works, just patience and a melody that earns the payoff instead of buying it on credit. What I like is that it never gets precious about itself. A lot of modern trance tries to borrow prog-house restraint and ends up sounding apologetic, scared of its own emotion. This one commits. The lead that comes back in after the drop has a slight detune on it that makes the whole thing sound like it is straining toward you. I had it on twice back to back before I noticed I had done it. It is deeply unembarrassed, the sound of a genre that was never chasing cool to begin with, and that honesty is most of the appeal.

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