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2 min read
Bonobo: Electronic Music for People Who Hate EDM
Bonobo is the off-ramp for people who hate EDM but love electronic music. Where to start with Simon Green: 'Kerala,' Black Sands, then Fragments.Read more . . . →Subscribe →Weekly digestOne email per week with the tracks worth your time. No spam, no Coldplay. -
1 min read
REAPER & DON DARKOE - SUFFOCATING (ft. Adalaide Adams)
Read more . . . →When did drum and bass decide it wanted to sound like a panic attack, and why do I like it this much? “SUFFOCATING” lives in the darker, half-industrial corner of the genre — REAPER and DON DARKOE build the drop out of a bassline that grinds like machinery with a bearing about to go, and Adalaide Adams sings over the top with a fragile, almost pretty topline the production keeps trying to swallow whole. That tension is the entire point: the more delicate the vocal gets, the heavier and more claustrophobic the low end presses in around it. When the...
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1 min read
No Mana, Wintersix & Sines From Saturn - Fire
Read more . . . →The synth lead on “Fire” sounds like a modem having a religious experience, which is exactly why it works. No Mana has always made electro-house a little too clever for whatever room it’s in, and with Wintersix and Sines From Saturn aboard that brainy streak gets bolted to an actual body-mover. The drop is all serrated, detuned stabs stacked at angles that shouldn’t lock together and somehow do, mechanical and funky in the same breath. It’s the kind of design-forward dance music that rewards good headphones — there’s stuff panning around the edges you’ll miss entirely on a phone. The...
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1 min read
Net Zero
Read more . . . →One plastic tree, forty thousand stumps, and a press release calling it a milestone.
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1 min read
Moby, Jacob Lusk, BLOND:ISH, Kiko Franco - Natural Blues (TECIE) (Live from Way Out West)
Read more . . . →I did not expect a 1999 Moby track to be the thing that got me this week, and yet here we are. “Natural Blues” was already one of the great uses of a sample in dance music — that keening Vera Hall field recording, “Oh Lordy, trouble so hard,” lifted off an Alan Lomax tape and dropped into a house track — and this live reworking finds a way to make it hit new. Jacob Lusk from Gabriels takes the vocal that was originally a sample and sings it live, and a gospel-trained voice turns the sorrow in it from...
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1 min read
Melé & RIA - Ay Sí (Extended Mix)
Read more . . . →If your summer needs one more track before the weather turns, make it this one. “Ay Sí” is Melé working the Latin-tinged house that’s become a whole signature over the years, and RIA’s vocal rides the groove with a swagger that turns the track into a night going to end somewhere nobody planned. The extended mix earns its length — it takes its time on the intro, letting a single conga pattern and a bassline do all the seduction before the vocal even shows up. There’s a piano stab in the back half that’s pure sun-on-your-face, the kind of chord...
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1 min read
The Afterglow
Read more . . . →Everyone left. The music is still going. 1. Maribou State - Blackoak (Myd Remix) The original Blackoak was already a slow-dissolve kind of track — patient electronic music that trusts you to stay with it. Myd took that and added a pulse underneath, just enough kinetic energy to turn a headphone record into something you could almost dance to if the room were empty and nobody was watching. Released on Hallucinating Love Deluxe ten days ago, which makes it the newest track in this entire summer run. Ninja Tune holding this one until late August was the right call. It...
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1 min read
Twelve and a Half Percent Is an Answer
Read more . . . →Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives held Chicoutimi-Le Fjord with 34.1% of the vote twelve months ago. On Monday the riding voted again. They got 12.5%. Third place. Behind the Bloc. That’s not a bad night at the polls — that’s the kind of number you see when a party stops existing in a region. Twenty-two points gone in a year, and the Conservative response is to demand Carney cancel a gas tax increase. All three byelections went Liberal with over 50% of the popular vote. Carney didn’t squeak these out. Nobody came remotely close. The Conservative share dropped in every single riding,...
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1 min read
Lynxie, Pat - LABELS
Read more . . . →Found this soundtracking a stranger’s gaming clip and had to go hunting for the ID, which is the exact path NCS was built to send you down. “LABELS” pairs Lynxie and Pat on a bit of melodic, future-bass-leaning electronic that’s more emotionally invested than the copyright-free-music tag usually implies. The vocal — one of them, or both, hard to tell in the stacked harmonies — carries a genuine ache under the polish, all longing about being defined by other people’s names for you, which the title spells out plainly enough. The drop trades screech for melody, supersaws swelling up into...
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1 min read
The News
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