Solardo have built a whole career on the rolling bassline that refuses to quit, and “Wake Me Up” is another one made to run a warehouse into the ground. The Manchester duo work the tech house end of things, all low-slung grooves and just enough acid squelch to keep it interesting, and this sits right in their pocket. The bassline is the entire song, a hypnotic rubber-band figure that loops for minutes while tiny details shift around it, a filter opening here, a percussion hit dropping in there. The vocal is minimal, the title phrase chopped and echoed into the groove and nothing more. I wouldn’t sit and listen to this on the sofa, but at 1am in a dark room it would do real damage to a crowd. Solardo have been dependable at this for years, and dependable is underrated when the job is keeping a floor moving right up to close.
January
Chrome Daydream
Chrome stars, jelly hearts and holographic colour. A nod to the glossy, optimistic graphics of the early web.