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1 min read
Friday opens with Sefa and that's how you start a weekend
Read more . . . →Tomorrow it’s real. Friday the gates open, and somewhere around 11:30 Sefa walks out for “This is Sefa” and sets the tone for everything that follows. Opening sets are underrated by people who show up at 4pm. Nobody’s tired yet, nobody’s lost their friends yet, the whole thing is still pure potential. These are the tracks for that first hour, when the field is filling up and you still genuinely believe you’ll make it through to the Endshow. 1. Sefa - The Omega Sefa operates in his own lane and barely anyone can follow him there. Piano, frenchcore, classical training,...
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Yellow turns 26 and it still sucks
Read more . . . →26 years ago today, Coldplay released “Yellow.” It still sucks. The whole song rides one metaphor a 15-year-old would’ve crossed out: you’re a star, I went yellow, the end. Chris Martin found four notes on a guitar, decided that was plenty, and pushed the falsetto until “earnest” started doing the job that “good” was supposed to do. Then the ad agencies got hold of it, and for the next decade you couldn’t watch a car drift down a coastal road or a phone spin on a white background without that mopey little riff leaking out of the speakers. It didn’t...
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1 min read
Spinnin' Sessions Radio - Episode #684
Read more . . . →I don’t usually post radio shows because most label mix series are just glorified release calendars with a four-on-the-floor stapled underneath, but episode 684 of Spinnin’ Sessions is a decent hour if you treat it for what it is. This is the sound of a major dance label showing its hand, an hour of upcoming and recent Spinnin’ material strung together for people who want the new stuff without doing the digging themselves. The mixing is functional rather than artful, which is fine, because the point is the tracklist not the transitions. What’s useful about something like this is the...
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1 min read
Sigma, Soul II Soul, Capo Lee & Zimma - BACK 2 LIFE (ft. Liv Campbell)
Read more . . . →Flipping “Back to Life” is a dangerous game because that Soul II Soul record is sacred to a lot of people, and the wrong remix gets you run out of town. Sigma know this, which is probably why they brought the actual originators along instead of just sampling them and hoping. Liv Campbell takes the vocal and gives it air, then Capo Lee and Zimma drop in on the grime side to remind you this is 2026 and not a heritage act. The drum and bass underneath is the polished, festival-ready Sigma sound that I usually have complicated feelings about,...
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1 min read
Redondo, KOATES & Mike Mago - Circulate
Read more . . . →Armada filed this under trance but don’t be fooled, “Circulate” is a house record through and through, and a sneakily good one. Redondo and Mike Mago both have long résumés in the groovier end of dance music, and pulling KOATES into the mix gives the whole thing a slightly tougher edge than either tends to make alone. The track is built on a rolling, hypnotic bassline that does exactly what the title says, circling back on itself until you stop noticing the loop and just start moving. There’s a vocal chop that surfaces every few bars like it’s checking in...
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1 min read
PIEM & SLM vs DJ Technics & Kotton The Cutie - Activated (I Just Wanna)
Read more . . . →That’s a four-name pileup on the credits, and normally a “vs” track with that many cooks in the kitchen ends up as mush, but “Activated” is lean and mean in a way that surprised me. PIEM and SLM bring the modern tech-house chassis while the DJ Technics and Kotton The Cutie side drags in some genuine Baltimore club DNA, and the collision is sharper than the metadata suggests. The “I just wanna” vocal does that thing where a chopped phrase becomes more hypnotic the more it repeats, until you stop hearing words and just hear rhythm. The drums hit with...
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1 min read
Ookay, Veronica Bravo - dontwakemeup
Read more . . . →Ookay will forever be the “Thief” guy to a lot of people, that one inescapable 2016 record, and the funny thing is he’s spent the years since quietly being a much more interesting producer than that single suggests. “dontwakemeup” pairs him with Veronica Bravo, and it’s a moodier, more emotional take on trap than the genre’s reputation for chest-beating would lead you to expect. The all-lowercase no-spaces title is doing some heavy lifting, signaling the bedroom-pop melancholy threaded through what’s underneath. Bravo’s vocal is half-asleep in the best way, drifting over a beat that hits hard but never loses its...
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The second name on the track is quietly stealing Defqon from the headliners
Read more . . . →Two days. Everyone buys the ticket for the names in the biggest font, fair enough. But the most interesting hardstyle right now is happening in the feature credits. The second name on the track, the kid a veteran pulled in because they heard something the rest of us hadn’t. By next summer half of these are headlining their own slots. Here’s who to clock before that happens. 1. Primeshock & Cryex - Higher Rush Cryex keeps showing up on tracks that punch above their billing, and this is a clean example. Primeshock bring the polish, Cryex brings the edge that...
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1 min read
92% Voted To Stop Building Their Own Replacements
Read more . . . →Hyundai wants 25,000 Boston Dynamics Atlas robots on its own assembly lines by 2028 — the humanoid kind, the ones in the viral clips doing backflips. The company that owns Boston Dynamics plans to build 30,000 of these a year, and most are headed straight for the factories where actual humans currently work. So this week 39,668 of those humans voted, and 92% of them said: strike. They are being asked, very politely, to spend the next two years assembling the machines that will assemble their own pink slips, and they declined. What they want instead is almost quaint. A...
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![Matisse & Sadko - Endless Sunrise [Extended Mix]](//coldplaysucks.com/cdn/shop/articles/maxresdefault_942b0b87-c167-44bf-a03a-5c0188679f91.jpg?v=1782024854&width=820)
1 min read
Matisse & Sadko - Endless Sunrise [Extended Mix]
Read more . . . →Matisse & Sadko have been Martin Garrix’s go-to collaborators for so long that people forget they’re genuinely excellent on their own, and “Endless Sunrise” is a reminder that the Russian duo can build a progressive house cathedral without anyone holding their hand. This is the extended mix, which is the only way to actually hear what they’re doing, because the radio edit chops out exactly the patient build that makes the payoff land. The intro takes its time, layering pads and a plucked melody until you almost forget a drop is coming, and then it arrives wide and golden like...
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![Matisse & Sadko - Endless Sunrise [Extended Mix]](http://coldplaysucks.com/cdn/shop/articles/maxresdefault_942b0b87-c167-44bf-a03a-5c0188679f91.jpg?v=1782024854&width=820)