The ceiling is low and the kick drum is not. Three records for the point in the night when the playlist stops being about mood and starts being about weight.
1. Amelie Lens - Falling Into Acid Dreams
Her own voice is in there somewhere, buried under acid and four-on-the-floor like a message from a parallel version of herself. Released on EXHALE to mark exactly a decade since her debut EP. Ten years later and the 303 still does most of the talking — tight and rolling, the kind of thing that only works when the sound system can handle it. I ran it on laptop speakers once. Don’t do that.
2. Lilly Palmer & Space 92 - Vicious Chords
The psy-bounce in the mid-section catches you mid-step — a trance echo buried in what’s otherwise pure driving techno. Two of the biggest festival names in European techno making something that sounds like the club, not the main stage. The kick and the lead trade blows for five minutes and neither one flinches.
3. Bart Skils & Weska - For the Music
There is a guitar riff in this techno record. Skils and Weska make one Drumcode collab a year, and this one is the sharpest in the run — the riff threads through a 130 BPM groove and the vocal hook locks in by the second loop. Five minutes and I had the riff stuck in my head. A guitar riff. In a techno record. On Drumcode.
My neighbours now know what 130 BPM sounds like. I am not sorry.