Sixty-odd tracks went up over the last week and the house crowd quietly ran the table, though drum and bass and dubstep were right behind it swinging. The recurring theme was old songs getting dragged somewhere they didn’t ask to go: a 1997 trance anthem turned into a trap crime scene, a 1972 afrobeat staple rebuilt as a peak-time house workout, and Vicetone’s “Nevada” flipped twice by two different people in the same seven days. If you like a producer robbing the past and getting away with it, this was your week.
Track of the Week
Da Hool - Meet Her at the Loveparade (Hex Cougar Remix)
“Meet Her at the Loveparade” is older than a chunk of the people who’ll hear this, and Hex Cougar leaves that famous riff almost untouched — dun, dun-dun-dun — right up until 1:22, when the drop opens underneath it like a garbage truck compacting. A pristine 90s hook leading straight into a bass sound that filthy has no business working, and it works because it shouldn’t. I laughed out loud the first time, which is the correct response. Listen →
The New Drops
House (~17 posts) — House ate this week, in every dialect it comes in. Deep, tech, bass, melodic — pick a room and someone filled it. Melé’s Soul Makossa rebuilt a 1972 classic on four elements and a stripped kick, Stacey Pullen brought proper Detroit swing, and Eats Everything & Descent’s Moonblower did the tech-house heavy lifting.
Dubstep & bass (~15 posts) — The week’s demolition crew. MUST DIE! showed up twice — VOGUE and BLOODBATH AND BEYOND — and Flux Pavilion, Liquid Stranger and AHEE joined forces for the heaviest thing here (more on that below).
Drum & bass (~10 posts) — The soulful wing turned up in force. Etherwood’s Roam sounds like the sky clearing, GLXY’s NO ID hides a Rhodes line you won’t catch until the third play, and Koven wrote an actual song instead of a vehicle for a bass patch.
Trance (~6 posts) — Quieter but present, from Argy and Oakenfold reanimating ResuRection to a full uplifting run late in the week.
Melodic & everything else (~10 posts) — The chill-out corner (MALO, Yere, ILMA), a fistful of big-room, and enough dance-pop to keep the playlist from getting too mean.
Also Banged This Week
- Koven - Heartbeat — the drop doesn’t explode, it blooms, and the second chorus climbs one note higher than the first and wrecks me every time. Listen →
- Flux Pavilion x Liquid Stranger x AHEE - Move Your Body — three producers daring each other to go weirder; the closest Flux has come to topping “Bass Cannon” in a decade. Listen →
- Vicetone - Nevada (Dubstep Remix) — the sunshine version dragged into a dark alley. Then compare it to the DnB one and pick a side. Listen →
- kiskadee, Jody Wisternoff & James Grant - Friendly Fire — deep house that actually earns the word deep. Listen →
See you next week. Coldplay still sucks.