Syn Cole makes sunrise-shaped house music, and Waiting is him doing it without a single wasted move. This is the sound that scored every festival aftermovie around 2015, that bright, yearning, hands-in-the-air progressive house, except the production has aged up and shed the cheese. Kazhi’s vocal is the anchor, a little wistful, sitting just behind the beat so it feels like a memory instead of a hook being sold to you. The drop trades the expected big lead for a plucked melody that skips along at knee height, which is a smarter choice than this genre usually bothers making. There’s a warmth in the low end that makes the whole thing feel like late-summer light through a train window. I’ve played it four times since it came up in my feed. You can hear that Syn Cole still cares in the small stuff, the way the hi-hats shuffle differently underneath the last chorus. This is the good kind of nostalgia, the kind that keeps moving forward instead of curling up in the past.
January
Chrome Daydream
Chrome stars, jelly hearts and holographic colour. A nod to the glossy, optimistic graphics of the early web.