Big week. House ran the table — tech house, deep house, disco house, the works — and for once I’m not mad about it. Drum and bass and dubstep split the heavy end down the middle, trance showed up to make grown adults cry on schedule, and somewhere in the mix a trance legend and a techno purist shared a Coachella stage and didn’t blow it up. Forty-one tracks. Not all of them are keepers, but the hit rate was better than it had any right to be.
Track of the Week
Armin van Buuren & Adam Beyer - No Mercy (Live @ Coachella 2026)
On paper this is a stunt: a trance institution and one of techno’s most respected purists from opposite ends of dance music’s class system, sharing a stage. Then it clicks into place and you stop caring about the optics. The live cut carries an energy the studio version would have sanded off — the relentless mechanical drive of techno fused with the emotional sweep trance never apologized for, plus a crowd that clearly couldn’t believe what it was watching. It’s the most interesting thing either of them has put their name to in a while. Listen →
The New Drops
House (~20 posts) — It ate. Tech house from Body Ocean & Matsu on DIRTYBIRD, Michael Gray going full disco-house on “Universe,” LAR dropping two deep-house cuts in one go, and OFFAIAH turning in a Toolroom workout. If you skipped house this week you skipped most of the week.
Drum & Bass (8 posts) — The reliable backbone. Tantrum Desire engineered a bassline that mutates every eight bars, Sigma flipped a Soul II Soul classic and somehow earned it, and Culture Shock came through with the melodic stuff. The scene’s been accused of going soft — none of this is.
Dubstep & Bass (8 posts) — The weird strain won. saka’s “styx!” sounds like a server room catching fire, T-Pain showed up on a posse cut with half of bass music, and Flux Pavilion gave “Bass Cannon” the Crankdat treatment. Headphones and questionable life decisions.
Trance (5 posts) — Above & Beyond did the thing they do better than anyone, KIMMIC went uplifting, and Grum split the difference with melodic house. Corny to some, oxygen to the rest of us.
Also Banged This Week
- Tantrum Desire - Step — surgical UK DnB that drags you back by the collar. Listen →
- saka - styx! — two and a half minutes of deciding subtlety is for other people. Listen →
- Sigma, Soul II Soul, Capo Lee & Zimma - BACK 2 LIFE — the breakdown gave me actual goosebumps. Listen →
- Knock2 - JUMP in — the build at 1:40 coils so tight you feel the drop in your teeth. Listen →
- Above & Beyond - Major Drop — trance in its most emotionally direct, no-notes form. Listen →
See you next week. Coldplay still sucks.