January
Chrome Daydream
Chrome stars, jelly hearts and holographic colour. A nod to the glossy, optimistic graphics of the early web.
News / tech house
-
1 min read
Mason Collective & VLAD vs Route 94 - Tell You Why
Read more . . . →There is a soulful vocal buried in Tell You Why that sounds like it has been sitting in a cloakroom since 2014, waiting for exactly this beat to come pick it up. That is roughly the point: this is Mason Collective going head to head with Route 94, the man behind My Love, that organ-and-vocal house record you heard nine hundred times the summer it landed and somehow never fully got sick of. Defected has been mining its own golden era hard lately, and most of those attempts are lazy; this one is not. Mason Collective bring the drier, rubberier...
Subscribe →Weekly digestOne email per week with the tracks worth your time. No spam, no Coldplay. -
1 min read
Piero Pirupa, Thomas Newson, Deetranada - Throw It Up
Read more . . . →The vocal is a rap hook, not the usual soulful house loop, and that single swap is what makes Throw It Up more interesting than the Toolroom average. Piero Pirupa has a real knack for the chunky, bass-heavy tech house that actually moves a room, and pairing him with Thomas Newson and the rapper Deetranada pulls the track toward something with more attitude than the genre’s usual polite groove. Deetranada’s bars give it a swagger most tech house, for all its precision, tends to leave on the table. Underneath, it is a clean Toolroom production, that reliable rolling bassline and...
Subscribe →Weekly digestSundays. One email. Zero ballads from white guys in beanies. -
1 min read
Oscar Jamo - Ain't Your Property
Read more . . . →Put this on at a pre-game and watch the room sort itself out. Ain’t Your Property is a Heldeep release doing exactly what that label does best, a lean house cut with a vocal hook that lands somewhere between a warning and a come-on. Oscar Jamo keeps the palette tiny: one bouncing bass note, a clap with a lot of room around it, and that repeated line chopped until it turns into percussion. The whole thing points straight at the floor and never once looks up. The bass does a little hiccup on the turnaround that resets your feet every...
Subscribe →Weekly digestWhat you missed this week, minus the corporate emo. -
1 min read
Alex Preston, Danny Rhys - What's Up Man
Read more . . . →What’s Up Man is exactly the kind of title that tells you this is not a track interested in deep meaning, and thank god for that some days. Alex Preston and Danny Rhys have made a piece of pure peak-time tech house, the sort of record that exists to work a dark room at 1am and does exactly that with zero pretension. The whole thing is built around a chopped vocal asking the title question over and over, a hook so simple it is almost confrontational, the kind that will either lodge in your skull or drive you up a...
Get the tee →Support the blogSome shirts are statements. This one is a verdict. -
1 min read
Ferreck Dawn - Need
Ferreck Dawn's Need is slick house that grabs you by the hips and doesn't ask. Gets worse and better every time the groove loops.Read more . . . →Get the tee →Support the blogMade for people who left the room during Yellow. -
1 min read
Recheta, Kikko Palumbo feat. Nadia Dolce - Heaven
Recheta & Kikko Palumbo let Nadia Dolce's vocals do the heavy lifting and the production earns them. It works.Read more . . . →Get the tee →Support the blogIf you wear this and someone hugs you, that's a real friend. -
1 min read
Tony Cortez - Mirame
Read more . . . →You know within eight bars whether a latin tech-house track is going to be a cheap gimmick or an actual groove, and Mirame plants its flag on the right side fast. Tony Cortez builds it on a warm, swinging bassline and a Spanish vocal that struts across the top with real swagger, not a sampled afterthought dropped in for flavour. Toolroom has been pushing this sound hard lately, the tech-house-meets-latin lane, and a lot of it blurs into one long conveyor-belt groove. This one has personality. The percussion is where it lives, congas and shakers tucked into the pocket so...
Get the tee →Support the blogLooks like Helvetica. Sounds like a closing argument. -
1 min read
Kevin D'Angello - Dirty Bitch
Read more . . . →Get past the frankly juvenile title and Kevin D’Angello has made a genuinely nasty little bass-house weapon. Dirty Bitch is all attitude, a growling distorted bassline and a vocal snippet chopped into pure percussion, the sort of thing built to drop the moment a tech-house set needs to turn mean. D’Angello works the harder, more aggressive end of the house spectrum, and this leans fully in, no melodic softening anywhere on it. The bass patch is the star, a dirty talkbox-ish growl that bites down on the off-beat and will not let up for the runtime. It rides a relentless,...
Get the tee →Support the blogThree words. One opinion. Cotton. -
1 min read
Eats Everything x Love Revolution - Give It To Me Baby
Eats Everything and Love Revolution lean on old Rick James funk swagger and the result is tech house you can't sit through. Dance or leave.Read more . . . →Get the tee →Support the blogWhat if your laundry was also a personality? -
1 min read
Joel Corry - Whisper (Karim Naas Remix)
Read more . . . →If you only know Joel Corry from the radio-pop smashes, this remix is going to reframe him for you a little. Karim Naas takes Whisper and drags it off the daytime airwaves into darker, sweatier territory, trading the glossy pop-house sheen for a stripped, driving tech-house groove with real menace in the low end. The vocal, that breathy whispered hook, survives the move intact and actually works better here, sounding less like a chart play and more like something murmured across a crowded dark room. Naas builds the drop around a tight, insistent bassline and a filtered synth that tightens...
Get the tee →Support the blogShips in 3–5 days. The outrage ships immediately.
