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1 min read
Raphi - Keep It Movin'
Read more . . . →The vocal sample in Keep It Movin’, a chopped soul snippet looped under a four-on-the-floor kick, is lifted so cleanly from the disco-house playbook that I spent the first listen trying to place where I had heard it. Raphi clearly has range, because this sits miles from his punchier club stuff, reaching instead for a warm, funky, feel-good house groove aimed at the sunnier end of the floor. And it is fine. It is perfectly, professionally fine. The groove bounces, the vocal is catchy, the bassline struts along happily. But I keep waiting for a moment that never comes, a...
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1 min read
Ravekings & JSPH - Acid Fire
Read more . . . →Acid Fire is a big-room festival weapon that does precisely what Revealed Recordings weapons do, no more and no less. The label Hardwell built runs on a formula now, a very effective and very predictable one, and Ravekings and JSPH colour inside those lines with a steady hand. There is an acid line in here, a classic 303 squelch wound up and filtered for the drop, which is the one element giving the track any real character. Everything else is the familiar big-room playbook: a tense build, a beat drop, a massive lead synth engineered to detonate a festival crowd...
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1 min read
4K & Olivia Rose - letmego (VIP)
Read more . . . →The breathy one-word hook that carries letmego, nothing but the title sighed over and over, normally signals a track too in love with sounding pretty. This VIP goes back and roughs it up. Olivia Rose’s vocal still floats across the intro the way the melodic cut promised, but the drop underneath has been swapped out for something with grit in its teeth, a chewy detuned bass the first mix clearly sanded smooth. It lands in that melodic-dubstep pocket where the long build pays off into a half-time drop that actually hits instead of just shimmering. The ten seconds of restraint...
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3 min read
This Week on coldplaysucks: Oct 4 - Oct 11
Read more . . . →Sixty drops this week. House and drum and bass split the top of the pile between them, dubstep brought the heavy artillery, and somehow a pair of budget Bluetooth earbuds is sitting at number four on the monthly chart. I genuinely have no complaints. The Charts Isam Hadjih feat. Ormella - In My Dreams: holding the top for a 4th week, completely unmoved. Listen → TLM feat. Merely - Summer Jam: locked at two for 5 weeks running. Listen → Seven Lions & Kill The Noise - I Need: steady at three, 4 weeks and counting. Listen → Cheap Earbuds...
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1 min read
Five Thousand Dollars and a Pinky Swear
Read more . . . →Trump is promising every adult American $5,000 if Republicans win the midterms. He calls it a “dividend.” From what? Tariff revenue the Supreme Court already gutted. The man is writing checks on a closed account and calling it generosity. The math alone should end the conversation. Two hundred seventy million adults times five thousand dollars is $1.35 trillion. The entire federal education budget is about $80 billion. He doesn’t have the money. Congress hasn’t authorized it. There is no application and no timeline. It is a number on a Truth Social post, and that’s all it will ever be. But...
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1 min read
Retro Kid - Let It Out
Read more . . . →Caught this one on a late drive with nobody else on the road and it fit the mood so exactly it felt rigged. Let It Out turned up on MrSuicideSheep, the channel that has introduced half a generation to melodic electronic music through a sheep logo and zero hype, and it is a prime example of what that channel does best. It is bright, emotional, melodic electronic music built around a vocal and a drop that goes for uplift over impact. Retro Kid is not a name you will see on a festival poster, and that is sort of the...
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4 min read
Bicep and Nostalgia as a Weapon: Why 'Glue' Still Wrecks You
Bicep, the Belfast duo behind 'Glue,' use nostalgia as a weapon. Why their rave-melancholy wrecks you, and where to start with their best tracks.Read more . . . →Get the tee →Support the blogLooks like Helvetica. Sounds like a closing argument. -
1 min read
BOP & Degs - Island On My Own (ft. Gabriella Bongo)
Read more . . . →If you have been clocking BOP’s name on track after track lately, Island On My Own shows you the songwriter rather than just the breakbeat scientist. This one is built around voices, Degs delivering his warm half-sung half-spoken flow and Gabriella Bongo floating a gorgeous hook over the top, and the drum and bass underneath almost serves them instead of the other way round. It is liquid at its most song-shaped, verses and a chorus you could hum in the shower, the breakbeat rolling gently enough that the whole thing could pass for a soul record that happens to run...
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1 min read
Relief Package
Read more . . . →He practiced this in the mirror. The paper clip is from his own desk. Capitol dome in the background, gold bars stacked on a cart, and a paper clip between the politician’s thumb and forefinger. He’s handing it to a man whose coat has seen better decades. The cart does not enter the conversation; it never does. This is the whole stimulus bill in one painting: the money is visible, the money is countable, and the money is going the other direction. The paper clip is the line item with your name on it, and it was bent before he...
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1 min read
Scorz - Stay Close
Read more . . . →Scorz is the first Brazilian artist Armada ever signed exclusively, which matters more than a trivia-night fact, because you can hear a slightly different sun in his records. Stay Close is trance at its warm, melodic-progressive end, and that warmth is where Diego Fonseca stakes his claim. The track builds the way the good ones do, patient layering of a synth arp and a breathy vocal until the drop feels earned instead of scheduled. What sets it apart from the Armada conveyor belt is restraint. He holds off the giant festival supersaw for as long as he can, letting the...
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