News / techno
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1 min read
Two Tracks That Broke the Genre Field
Read more . . . →There’s a Brazilian funk vocal buried inside a modular techno track and it heads Mixmag’s best-of list for 2026 so far. There’s a house record on a Ninja Tune imprint that sounds like it was assembled across three time zones at once. Two tracks this week with no fixed address, and both of them are better for the homelessness. 1. Skrillex, Randomer, Blawan & MC Dricka - Thistle This was floating around DJ sets for years before its proper release in May, and the wait was the right call. Blawan’s shredded metallic textures, Randomer’s chopped drum programming, MC Dricka’s Brazilian...
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4 min read
Melodic Techno, Explained (Or: Why Everyone Cries at Afterlife)
Melodic techno explained: the genre that tricked techno-haters into loving techno. Tale of Us, Afterlife, Anyma, and why 40,000 people cry in a field.Read more . . . →Subscribe →Weekly digestSundays. One email. Zero ballads from white guys in beanies. -
1 min read
The techno stage doesn't care that you're on holiday
Read more . . . →The techno tent at Tomorrowland is a strange thing to walk into after the mainstage. There’s no confetti and no vocalist begging you to put your hands up, and the drops aren’t telegraphed forty-five seconds in advance. Just a relentless grey kick and a room full of people staring at the floor in bliss. It’s the least Instagrammable corner of the whole site and, on the right night, the best one. Weekend two lands tomorrow. Here’s what that room sounds like this year. 1. Eli Brown x HI-LO - Pyramid Rave Oliver Heldens moonlighting as HI-LO next to Eli Brown,...
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1 min read
Stacey Pullen - I Wanna Dance (Extended Mix)
Read more . . . →Detroit veterans do not make music for your phone speaker, and Stacey Pullen’s “I Wanna Dance” is a nine-minute reminder of what a record built for a real room feels like. The extended mix takes its sweet time — you’re two and a half minutes in before the vocal even shows up — and that patience is the entire pleasure. Pullen has been doing this since the Belleville days and it shows in how little he panics; the track trusts a single hypnotic groove to carry you, adding a hi-hat here, a filter sweep there, never once begging for attention....
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1 min read
Tomorrowland is in Belgium and the locals still run the place
Read more . . . →Reminder that Tomorrowland happens in Boom, a Belgian town of about 18,000 that swells to festival-sized every July and then goes quiet again. The polite thing is to respect the home team, and Belgium’s dance roster punches so far above the country’s weight it’s almost unfair. Four locals worth your time, running from radio-friendly to genuinely frightening. 1. Lost Frequencies - Are You With Me Felix De Laet was still a teenager when this became the first Belgian track to top the UK singles chart. It’s a country sample turned into a sunset anthem, and it should be corny, but...
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1 min read
Charles D x TMPR x Inner City - Good Life
Rebooting Inner City's untouchable Good Life is a bold swing. Charles D x TMPR mostly get away with it, keeping Paris Grey's vocal front and centre.Read more . . . →Get the tee →Support the blogIf you wear this and someone hugs you, that's a real friend. -
1 min read
Tomorrowland turns 20 and the hype is insufferable and mostly earned
Read more . . . →Four days out and my feeds are 90% people you’ll never see again posting the same drone shot of the mainstage. Tomorrowland hits its 20th edition this year, they’ve branded it Consciencia, and yes, most of it is a very expensive Instagram backdrop with a castle stuck on top. But the thing didn’t get this big on nothing. Five tracks that will actually go off in Boom and won’t make you feel stupid for humming them on the flight home. 1. Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike vs Ummet Ozcan - The Hum The Belgian duo are basically Tomorrowland’s house band,...
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1 min read
The dark Tomorrowland tents where you lose track of time
Read more . . . →Eight days out. There’s a whole side of Tomorrowland that trades drops for hypnosis. The melodic techno rooms, where the point is to lose track of time entirely and wander out at sunrise wondering what happened. Mind Against are on the bill this year, so here’s a run through the sound they came up in: 1. Mind Against - Walking Away The Afterlife aesthetic in one track: patient, cold, gorgeous. It takes almost three minutes to fully arrive and every second of that build earns it. This is 4am music, played to a room that has stopped checking the time....
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1 min read
Tomorrowland is 11 days out and the internet has lost its mind
Read more . . . →Tomorrowland kicks off in Boom in eleven days, and the internet has already decided it’s the greatest thing to ever happen to a Belgian field. Two weekends, sixteen stages, five hundred names, one castle-shaped mainstage that costs more than most people’s houses. You don’t need a €500 ticket to hear the tracks that’ll actually run the place, though. Here’s the pre-game: the songs the Mainstage will lean on before Guetta pretends he built them from scratch. 1. Martin Garrix - Animals The one that turned a Dutch teenager into a headliner. That three-note lead still detonates a crowd on contact,...
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1 min read
MNK & RayRay - TECHNO BOY TECHNO GIRL
MNK & RayRay named a track TECHNO BOY TECHNO GIRL and it's exactly as dumb and fun as that sounds. Built to detonate a festival tent.Read more . . . →Get the tee →Support the blogShips in 3–5 days. The outrage ships immediately.
