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1 min read
Particle - Coming Down
Read more . . . →There’s a half-time section in the back third of Coming Down where the whole track slows its own heartbeat, and it’s the best decision on the record. Particle spends the first stretch building a fairly standard rolling DnB groove, pleasant enough, the kind of thing you nod along to without remembering later. Then it drops into this dragging, weighted breakdown that completely changes the temperature of the room, and I sat up the first time it happened. That’s the move that separates a track you file away from one you send to people. The bass design throughout is genuinely nasty,...
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1 min read
P3PPER, Jibaan - Again (In My Mind)
Read more . . . →If you write off everything on NCS as faceless gaming-video fuel, Again (In My Mind) is the kind of track that argues back. P3PPER and Jibaan turn in a melodic electronic cut with a vocal hook that’s genuinely stuck in my head, that half-sung “in my mind” refrain looping long after I’d closed the tab. NCS gets dismissed as a copyright-free content mill, and plenty of it is exactly that, but every so often the label puts out something that would hold its own on a proper release. This is one. The production is bright and clean, the drop trades...
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1 min read
Strawman Bonfire
Read more . . . →The town is on fire. The town is also thrilled, because they finally got the scarecrow. Somebody built the enemy out of straw and the whole square turned out to watch it burn. Behind them every house is already gone. Nobody looks back, because looking back means admitting the scarecrow never lit a single match.
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1 min read
NCS & Friends - NCS Greatest Hits Mashup
Read more . . . →Full disclosure: this is a mashup of NCS back catalogue, not a new track, so grade it accordingly. NoCopyrightSounds spent the last decade becoming the default soundtrack of every gaming montage and small-creator video on the internet, and this greatest-hits blend is basically a victory lap through the melodies that scored a generation of Minecraft edits. If you spent any time on YouTube between 2015 and now, at least three of these will trip a memory you didn’t know you’d stored. It’s well-stitched, the transitions are smooth, and it’s a genuinely nostalgic listen if that era means anything to you....
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Luchi dj - Ese Beso (Fruta Fresca)
Read more . . . →This is a Carlos Vives flip and it absolutely should not work as well as it does. Ese Beso takes Fruta Fresca, a vallenato-pop song your Colombian aunt has loved for twenty-five years, and drops it into a big Spinnin’ dance record, and the collision is ridiculous in the way the best party tracks are. The original melody is unmistakable, all sunshine and accordion, and Luchi welds it to a four-on-the-floor kick and a drop built for a beach club at golden hour. What makes it land is that he keeps enough of the original’s warmth intact; a lazier producer...
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The Smallest Slice Since 1947
Read more . . . →Since 1947, the government has tracked how much of the economy goes to the people who actually do the work. This year it hit 52.8 percent — the lowest number in the entire dataset. Not during Reagan. Not during the 2008 crash. Not during COVID. Right now, with corporate pre-tax profits at $4.8 trillion in a single quarter. The economy is doing fine. Your cut of it isn’t. Elon Musk’s Tesla compensation last year came out to $158 billion — 2.5 million times what the median Tesla employee made. Two and a half million times. The S&P 500 has gained...
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1 min read
LEYO & Thierry Ganz - Stamina (Extended Mix)
Read more . . . →You already know if a Defected extended mix is for you, and Stamina is a good one. LEYO and Thierry Ganz turn in a piano-and-bassline house cut built for the long haul, which the seven-minute runtime makes clear from the jump. This is proper daytime-terrace house: a rolling groove, a vocal chopped into a mantra, and a piano riff that shows up at the halfway mark and lifts the whole thing into the sky. Defected have a formula and it’s a good formula, and Stamina hits every beat of it without feeling lazy about it. The bassline has a lovely...
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Joker - SETI
Read more . . . →The synth lead on SETI sounds like a cathedral organ someone rewired into a spaceship, which is the most Joker thing imaginable. The Bristol producer basically invented the “purple” strain of dubstep back when the genre was one big argument, and this is him still mining that seam of woozy, detuned melody over half-step drums. What lands is how patient it is; the first minute is all atmosphere and a bassline that keeps threatening to arrive before it finally does, thick and rubbery and worth the wait. It’s got that video-game-boss-fight grandeur he does better than almost anyone, melody carrying...
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1 min read
Steering as a Service
Read more . . . →The car still turns. It just wants to know if you’re on the annual plan. You bought the car. You did not, apparently, buy the part of the car that goes left. Heated seats were the warning shot and the wheel was always the plan. Cancel anytime, ideally at a red light.
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Joel Corry - Whisper (Will Sparks Remix)
Read more . . . →Heard this blasting out of a passing car before I ever saw the title, which is the most honest endorsement a dance track can get. Will Sparks takes Joel Corry’s Whisper and drags it into Melbourne bounce territory, all that off-kilter bouncing kick and the detuned lead that made the sound huge in Australia years back. Joel Corry is about as commercial as UK dance gets, and I usually find his stuff a bit airless, but the Sparks remix roughs it up in a way I actually enjoy. The bounce rhythm gives it a lurch the polished original never had,...
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