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1 min read
jonty - off2
Read more . . . →NCS is where a certain kind of listener goes for copyright-free energy, and most of it blurs together, so it’s worth stopping when something arrives with an actual identity. off2 has one. jonty builds it around a chopped vocal that’s been pitched and stuttered until it’s basically another synth, and the groove underneath has a bounce closer to UK garage than the usual NCS big-room fare. The drop at 1:15 is deceptively light, no massive wall of sound, just a springy bassline and that vocal doing gymnastics, and it’s more fun for the restraint. Lowercase-titled tracks by lowercase-named producers usually...
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1 min read
The Second Voice - DON'T LEAVE
Read more . . . →DON’T LEAVE wears its heart on its sleeve and then screams it through a festival PA. The Second Voice make the kind of emotional dance-pop that Spinnin has basically built a business model on — a pleading vocal, a huge melodic drop, feelings dialled to eleven. The melodrama is turned all the way up, and the topline earns it: the singer sounds like they mean every syllable of that title. The drop at 1:22 trades the expected big vocal-chop lead for something a little more restrained, letting the emotion carry weight the synths don’t have to. There’s a key change...
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1 min read
ILMA - Since That Day
Read more . . . →There’s a specific kind of electronic track built entirely around one moment of release, and Since That Day spends its whole runtime earning a single drop. ILMA holds the tension almost too long: the build from 1:10 keeps stacking layers, a vocal chop, a rising synth, a filter creeping open, until you’re basically begging for it, and then at 1:48 it finally breaks and the wait pays off completely. This is patient music in an impatient genre. A lesser producer drops the beat thirty seconds earlier and kills the whole effect stone dead. The melody itself is nursery-rhyme simple, which...
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1 min read
TESS - Shooting Stars
Read more . . . →Shooting Stars has a hook that feels borrowed from a song you already love, which is either great writing or slightly suspicious, and I’ve stopped caring which. TESS turns in a piece of polished mainstage dance for Spinnin that knows exactly what it is: a hands-in-the-air festival moment, and proud of it. The vocal is bright and a little melancholy at the same time, riding over a plucky lead that builds to a drop at 1:15 that’s basically a fireworks display in audio form. It’s not subtle, and it isn’t pretending to be — but there’s real craft in making...
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4 min read
Afro House, Explained (Yes, Black Coffee Won)
Afro house, explained: the 120 BPM groove that took over the main stage, why Black Coffee won, and how it's different from amapiano.Read more . . . →Get the tee →Support the blogMade for people who left the room during Yellow. -
1 min read
GLXY - NO ID
Read more . . . →How does a duo make drum and bass this warm without it turning into wallpaper? GLXY keep quietly figuring it out. NO ID rides a rolling break with a bassline that’s more felt than heard, and the whole thing has this dusky, late-set quality that a lot of liquid DnB reaches for and misses by being too clean and too bright. Around 2:25 they strip it to almost nothing, a filtered pad and a ghost of the drums, and the rebuild after is the reason to stay. There’s a jazz-chord thing happening under the second half that I keep noticing...
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1 min read
How to Tell a Frontier Model From a Fat Kitten
Read more . . . →Before you reshare the next screenshot of a “frontier model,” run it through the Le Chaton Fat test. Is there a real model card or product page, or just a screenshot of a chart? Can you actually call it — open weights to download, or an API key that works? Is the benchmark published and reproducible, or is the “leaderboard” one image somebody made in an afternoon? Le Chaton Fat failed all three: no weights, no API, no model card, and the only leaderboard it ever topped was a parody chart bragging about a croissant context window and 1,000 meows...
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1 min read
SKisM ft. Virus Syndicate - Like This (Skybreak Remix)
Read more . . . →Skybreak got his hands on a Never Say Die staple and rebuilt the whole thing from the chassis out. The original ‘Like This’ was already a brick — Virus Syndicate barking over a riff that never apologises — and this remix keeps the bars but swaps the engine for something with way more moving parts. Skybreak’s whole thing is that hyper-detailed, glitched-to-hell sound design where every eighth note gets its own little event, and about 1:40 in the drop folds in on itself twice before you’ve figured out where the downbeat went. It should feel cluttered and instead it feels...
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1 min read
Trance is unfashionable and the A State of Trance crowd doesn't care
Read more . . . →A week out now. A State of Trance gets its own stage at Tomorrowland because Armin van Buuren is essentially a Belgian national monument at this point. Trance has been deeply out of fashion for years and its crowd could not care less, which is honestly the most punk thing about the whole festival. Two for the faithful: 1. Armin van Buuren - Blah Blah Blah Armin trolling the purists with a big-room stomper named after exactly what the snobs say about his commercial stuff. The joke is that it goes off harder than most of the “serious” records, and...
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1 min read
Ferreck Dawn - Lost At The End
Read more . . . →There’s a warmth to proper Toolroom house that a lot of the streaming-optimized stuff has sanded off completely, and Lost At The End has it in spades. Ferreck Dawn writes house that actually grooves, that slightly loose, organic swing that gets you nodding before you’ve consciously decided to, and this rides a piano stab and a rubbery bassline into a chorus almost too pretty for the club. The vocal hook lodged immediately; I had it going round my head on the walk to get coffee this morning, a full day after one play the night before. It builds without ever...
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