Hello dear dancers, and welcome back to our weird, wired world of sound—one where Brazilian acid storms rage next to Tokyo two-step and Floridian spaceflight gives way to Texan ultraqueer rave rap. We’ve got the most uncomplicated of good times and the most terrifying of mindwarps; the purest of house and techno as honed over decades, and the most future-leaning hybrids available. We’ve got sleaze and psychedelics—and the amazing thing is, it all works together. Press play and get familiar.
Yui Horie
“DEAR FUTURE (cuxrixous remix)_unfinished”
Tokyo’s Prettybwoy—occasionally known as cuxrixous—has consistently pushed the boundaries of grime, deconstructed club, and other weird bass music for over a decade now. Here, he flips a classic anime theme into something that redefines the term “future garage.” The physicality of the sound design on the two-step beats, the shimmer of the synths, the impossible closeness of the vocal—all of it sounds like the virtual and real are no longer separate, and like material reality itself is AI-generated.
Fred Everything
“Never” (Osunlade & Waajeed Remixes)
It’s a hell of a month for the classic house remix, with young New Yorkers musclecars scoring reworks from no less than NV, Louie Vega, and Maurice Fulton. And now: This magical package of takes on Frederic Blais’s classic-in-the-making, with the legendary Robert Owens on vocals. Osunlade’s remix embraces you like a bubble bath, swooping currents of bass and chords moving deliciously all the time—and on the instrumental, he adds a delightful nod to Owens’s Fingers Inc. with a squarewave bassline. Detroiter Waajeed gives the hi-hats more urgency and creates whole new hooks from cascading thumb pianos and metallic pings. And Blais himself adds both an instrumental and a beat-less “Reprise” that are each lush in their own right. Magic from start to end.
Karen Nyame KG
Rhythm Volume 1
Four new collaborations from Londoner Karen Nyame KG, and four new demonstrations that she is one of the greatest producers and joiners-of-dots out there. “Sovereign Groove,” with Nambia’s Gina Jeanz, is fascinating in that—like Wes Lee’s recent “Gates”—it extrapolates backward from South African amapiano to the roots of house in ‘80s Italo disco. “Manigua’s Groove” with Ghanaian-Brit producer Hagan, is an amapiano-derived groove offering wonderfully cinematic nighttime thrills and menace. “Saturn,” with Durban gqom producer Griffit Vigo, adds immense, dreamlike subtlety to that sound’s spaciousness with some very special clap patterns and vocal drones. Best of all is lead track “Hold of Me,” with UK singer TYSON riding levitational waves of bass and shakers to the heavens.
Velvet
Femme Fatale
Vinyl LP
No, it’s got nothing to do with the Velvet Underground song of the same name. This Velvet is the UK duo of Jo Sims and Natali Williams, and “Femme Fatale” is a great bit of narcotic chug that references electropop, synth disco, and the most euphoric variants of rave, with the glorious refrains of “money… danger… sex” adding compelling sleaze. There’s a slicker, smoother remix from James Atkin (the singer from ‘90s Brit indie-dance stars EMF), plus the deeply psychedelic, downtempo “Closer,” which itself comes with dub version and spiky drum & bass remix. All of it is playful, peculiar, and packed with hooks.
Caught In Joy
Saturn
Compact Disc (CD)
There’s a million dudes out there with more modular kit synth than they need making burbles and warbles all day long. But not many of them manage to kick up quite such a convincing feelgood vibe as Florida’s Caught In Joy. Everything here is a direct throwback to Tomita, Jean Michelle Jarre, and untold science documentary themes—and it’s all just lovely. It glides, it swoops, it whooshes, and it takes you out to float among glowing nebulae.
ScanOne & Meat Beat Manifesto
“Secondary Loop” b/w “Into the Sun”
Vinyl LP
London’s Yellow Machines label has long demonstrated that early ‘90s hardcore rave can be reworked without cheesy retro-ism, and that lesson continues here. ScanOne’s “Secondary Loop” is absolutely jam-packed with cheerily familiar electro and rave samples, plus assorted bleeps, and warbles. But its production and general aesthetic still manage to sound outright futuristic. Rave forefather Jack Dangers of Meat Beat Manifesto sounds even more sci-fi, his bleeps and breaks firing off in all directions on a track that’s got IDM levels of complexity—yet still stays firmly in the heart of the dance.
Chris Conde and Hard Ton
Good Boys Say Yes Sir
A delightful backstory to this—Italian acid house troupers Hard Ton teamed up with NYC-based Texan rapper Chris Conde for a bit of ultra-queer filth, and the resulting track then went viral after enraged right-wingers shared a clip of him performing it. All of which would just be a bit of fun, if it weren’t for the fact that the track is a banger—in all senses. Yes, the torrent of smut and kink means the vocal version is not for the faint-hearted; but as you’ll hear from the instrumental, Hard Ton’s own contribution is pretty sweaty and sleazy, too.
Simon Pyke
Four Flex One
Either under his own name or as Freeform, Simon Pyke is best known for ambient and otherwise strung-out electronic soundscapes. For a change, he’s turned his hand to techno here—potentially, very popular techno. “Moonbeams” and “Crocodile Part 1 & 2” could fit nicely alongside the best melodic Detroit or Frankfurt output, and with a bit of luck might find their way into sets by big DJs. The eight-and-a-half minute “Overnight Looking Down” is something else: A really long ambient/dreampop/shoegaze piece with a steady kick underpinning it. It’s heart-stoppingly beautiful, and deserves to be deployed at very special moments.
p1nkf1re
Red
Vinyl LP
Madrid’s Analogical Force is one of the great outposts for “braindance,” the sound that coalesced around Aphex Twin’s Rephlex label at the turn of the millennium and has remained a micro-subculture of its own ever since. The debut for the label by p1nkf1re hits all the familiar notes: Sped-up electro/breakbeat rhythms, squiggly acid, loads of melody and, crucially, an element of funk underpinning everything. There’s huge variation over these seven tracks, showing exactly why this sound is so enduring.
Various Artists
A Curated Series Vol. 2
South America loves its big, booming, dark room, smoke-and-strobes techno, and here, artists from Colombia, Argentina, and Brazil—with one guest spot from Spain—demonstrate the style and swagger with which they produce it. There’s total one-note hypnotism, there’s big fat riffs, there’s swooping bass, there’s some particularly rowdy drum machine abuse from the Buenos Aires team-up of Kid Riot and Hubbler. And, perhaps most fun of all, there’s a Brazilian space-battle acid storm from São Paulo veteran Phabian.
131bpm
“Want More?”
Sometimes you need to go back to basics, and what could be better on that front than this Berlin-via-Brooklyn joyous house pumper? It’s got a vocal repeating the title to coax you on; rich diva tones; a bassline that just rolls and rolls and rolls; and interlocking percussion patterns that turn it into an embodiment of pure momentum. It is good times personified. Wisely, label boss Justin Cudmore realizes it couldn’t be any more “up,” and for his remix turns it in on itself for a darker, trippier, acid excursion.
Doctor Jeep
Mecha
Shameless rave smashers of the month come from New Yorker Andre Lira, aka Doctor Jeep. Leaning into his Brazilian heritage—but also happily grabbing other Afro-Portuguese sounds from Luanda and Lisbon—he delivers three big, bash-y, high-velocity tracks that practically demand you switch off all faculties and leap and shout with abandon. “Macumba” in particular, with its robot voices, deep funk history, and half-step sections, feels like an anthem in the making. There are wild remixes, too, with militant techno from Peder Mannerfelt, big festival house from Ploy, and intensely weird, thickly layered space rave from Wata Igarashi.
