V. Christie - Atlas

The moment that sold me is at 1:40, when the whole track cuts to almost nothing and then rebuilds itself one layer at a time. Atlas is an NCS release, which usually means clean, stream-ready melodic electronic, and this is a very good example of the type without being a slave to it. V. Christie has a knack for a lead melody that lodges itself in your head on first listen, and this one had me humming it in the shower a full day later. The production is glossy in that copyright-free way, but there’s real songwriting under the polish, a chord progression that actually goes somewhere instead of just looping until the runtime’s up. NCS gets dismissed as background music for teenagers’ montages, and sure, but every so often one of their releases has legs beyond the algorithm and this is one of them. The build is patient and the payoff bright, genuinely hopeful without tipping into saccharine. Worth more than the free-download label it’ll get filed under.

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