This week we’ll be reviewing a whopping 11 tracks with one of them earning a 90+ rating! We also talked about the new SaberZ EP and Armin Van Buuren’s positive influence on higher tempo festival music! As always, we’ll be partnering with The QR Network to compile a short recap of notable tracks that we didn’t have time to cover during the previous week. We hope you enjoy our selection and if you have any tracks you’d like to see here, please feel free to post your suggestions in the comments!
SaberZ – Without Your Love
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Here for their first tracks of 2019, SaberZ has come at us with a two-track EP on Revealed Recordings. While “Nebula” is a perfectly serviceable track, we wanted to talk about “Without Your Love” since we feel it best exemplifies the style the SaberZ has been pioneering in festival music for the past years. While certainly less trance-like than say, “Storm,” from their EP on TNC, “Without Your Love” has those subtle trance elements that give the track a more emotional touch than your average run-of-the-mill big room track. One of the things I personally love about SaberZ are their memorable melodies. For instance, the first track I heard of theirs, “Drone,” still runs through my head on occasion even three years after its release. After hearing the two tracks from the EP, the melodies just don’t strike me as ones I’ll be humming from years to come. Here’s to hoping for more iconic SaberZ melodies in the future, in the meanwhile, I’m sure these two tracks will elevate the DJ mixes and playlists they appear in for the coming weeks.
79/100
Jaxx & Vega vs. SEEQ – Soundcontrol
Jaxx & Vega seems to have become a more permanent figure on the Smash the House roster as they continue to push their version of big room onto the masses. Given how big “Soundcontrol” plays into Jaxx & Vega’s branding, having done sixty episodes of their podcast of the same name, you’d think that this track would be nothing short of iconic. What we get instead is a remode of every big room track from 2012. The first drop has an Ummet Ozcan-style melody like in Megatron and the second drop is populated by repetitive, one-note triplets with the signature, loose Jaxx & Vega synth and slight trance undertones. The single breakdown of the track is a reverb-y mess with a messy call & response structure and an empty extended build. While this is certainly not the generic mess that was Quintino’s “Brasil Connect,” it’s still a disappointing track from this group of producers who are normally on the frontlines of keeping big room fresh and enjoyable.
53/100
Adventure Club x CrankDat – Next Life (feat. Krewella)
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When you look at the rise of EDM and its growth, you can also see how Adventure Club and Krewella have grown in parallel. It’s hard to tell which influenced which, whether these two groups brought more people into the genre or the genre brought more fans to them. Regardless, they have been able to maintain their momentum and stay on top of trends while keeping their core fanbase at heart throughout the journey. Seeing them team up again after so long, and not only that, but also bring in some hot, fresh talent with Crankdat is enough to get me excited for this release. When I heard it, it was about what I expected. That is – a mostly nostalgic feeling track with just enough edge for you to know it was made this year. That being said, I can’t tell if this track is truly timeless, or just hits all the right notes to make you think it’ll be timeless. For me, I don’t feel like they took enough risks with this track and just gave us a safe collaboration that they knew would please their existing fanbases. It’s a solid track and carries that Adventure Club sound with Krewella’s vocals and CrankDat’s light touch, but nothing special in the end.
80/100
Fox Stevenson – Go Like
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Oh man, I truly believe we’re approaching a new golden era of EDM and it’s because of songs like “Go Like.” It combines the indie-rock style from the early 2000s and pairs it with an incredibly fresh take on melodic dubstep. This song makes me feel like it’s summertime on the beach without a care in the world. I can just close my eyes and get lost in this song and the memories it invokes within me. At first, I was about to upset that the vocalist wasn’t credited but then I remembered that Fox Stevenson can actually sing! Through and through, this is a beautiful artistic creation and represents some of the best that EDM has to offer. Yes, this is one of the highest ratings I’ve given a song. I love this. I can’t think of anything to criticize except maybe the outro but even that pays homage to traditional dubstep arrangement and it fits well within the track.
94/100
Austin Millz & Claire Ridgely – Broke Boy
Every so often, I like to include some tracks in the recap that are just calming and solid additions to your chill music playlists. One of my soft spots is downtempo house music and this one fits the bill pretty well. It has soft, yet bass-y kicks and soft vocals accompanied by muted, oscillating synths. It’s impossible not to tap your foot to this track and just take five minutes to decompress with this on in the background. The arrangement is very clever in switching things up to keep things feeling fresh throughout its longer runtime. Honestly this is one of the few tracks I could leave on repeat for a while and drift off for a short nap. At any rate, this is less of a review and more of just a recommendation since there’s nothing particularly unique about this track, which to me is its appeal. Sometimes you just need some tracks to fill the time on your playlist.
75/100
Marnik – Up & Down
After hearing Armin’s follow up to “Blah Blah Blah” with “Turn it Up,” “Up & Down” feels like their spiritual successor. Same BPM but instead of a psy-influence, Marnik takes a more minimal Melbourne Bounce approach with it. Featuring lovely piano melodies and what sounds like a child’s choir, “Up & Down” has the same, goosebump-inducing quality of the Armin tracks. As a longtime fan of Melbourne Bounce, I really enjoyed the clean yet melodic qualities of the track and found myself humming along to the tune every time I put it on. I very much appreciated the acoustic qualities of the track blended with a solid electronic production touch. Is this up to the same level of quality as the Armin’s anthems? I wouldn’t go that far, but I’m glad to see that other artists are looking to him as an influence and doing their own take on his best elements.
84/100
Magnificence & Goja – Lights
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Of all of the people I expected to collaborate, these two did not come to mind. “Lights” is an excellent blend between Goja’s liquid-midtempo style and Magnificence’s fusion of electro and bass house. After last year’s stunner of an EP, it seems that Magnificence is prepping for round two based on their social media posts and “Lights” is a promising start to this. This is exactly the type of direction I love to see artists take: taking their established sound and evolving it. The breakdown is wholly incredible with the vocoder soaring over the droning note to create an undeniable driving energy to take us into the next drop. In summary, “Lights” is wonderfully atmospheric and represents both an excellent collaboration between two talented groups as well as a foray into the second EP from Magnificence.
88/100
Jay Hardway – Exhale
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To think that this is the same Jay Hardway behind classics such as “Bootcamp” and “Wizard” is just stunning. His growth as a producer and consistency in making memorable track is among the best in the industry. On to “Exhale,” this song builds on that incredible, 8-bit progressive house style popularized with “Stardust.” Does this track breathe new life into that progressive sound after three years? I would argue that it doesn’t and that it only serves as another addition to that type of Jay Hardway track, joining the rank of solid yet forgettable tracks like “Amsterdam” and “Thanks a Million.” An enjoyable track but doesn’t add anything new to a solid signature sound.
81/100
Promise Land X Boothed – Speechless
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Boothed has been someone I’ve followed since the bounce era and to see him pushing his way to the top with his new groove sound is great to see. Moon Records is also a bit of an enigma of a label where, at least it seems to me, artists send their tracks that didn’t get picked up by larger labels. “Speechless” does seem like a worthy follow-up to Boothed’s EP on Protocol Recordings and is by no means a dip in quality. I love the clock motif in the second break paired with some menacing bass swipes. Promise Land also injects their style of groove from their Spinnin’ EP and puts it in a less experimental package. Great structure, solid energy, and an overall groovy feeling makes “Speechless” a worthy addition to any groove set.
77/100
Damien N-Drix – Flubber
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If I were to summarize Damien N-Drix’s style of bass house, I would call it “quirky.” Some are darker like “Pushah” and then you have brighter tracks like here with “Flubber.” With an almost future house-like break, “Flubber” shows us yet another variation on the Damien N-Drix sound. His signature is one of the better in the scene and it’s great to see that he’s still exploring new territory with it rather that letting it stagnant with repetitive releases. Another note with “Flubber,” I can’t emphasize how much I love that there are two unique, full breaks AND two distinct drops! I hope that other producers start to get on this trend, and they work to cram more music into a shorter amount of time. The time of copy-pasting sections of track should be phased out.
83/100
Notalike & Axiver – Heart
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Italian duo Notalike, already seen on Fonk and Revealed with various groovy productions, teamed up with the connational Axiver and delivered “Heart” via Pather’s Groove. Despite the classic (and somehow predictable) funky structure in the breakdown, with a vintage type of vocal and oldschool vibes slowly escalating into an electro house buildup, the overall sensation is refreshing. The groovy drop presents Notalike vibes mixed by something unpredictable (an Axiver creation, I guess), and it’s changing its shapes in a continuous and dynamic loop. “Fonkish” release, with a common formula but with enough personality!
78/100
We hope you enjoyed our recap of selected songs from last week. If there is a song that you felt should have been on here, be sure to leave it in the comments below and we’ll do our best to give our take on it. Certain songs were not included because they will be covered in more detail in the following days so make sure you’re following our social media pages to see all of our latest posts!
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Zac Graham – Revival (ft. Matthew Titmouse)
Trilane & Loris Cimino – Still Think Of You (ft. David Shane)
Bear Grillz feat. Micah Martin – Stay
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This recap was provided by The QR Network which is a site for interviews with producers and DJs. Check out their interviews with Maddix, Magnificence, and SaberZ.
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