LATECRATES

It is a very spare record. The percussion is bright and sharp, and there is essentially one idea per bar, worked over and over. What saves it from being boring is the bass: instead of holding at a fixed volume, it bends and shapes itself around the chord underneath. You can hear it move with each change. The rest of the space stays mostly empty, which means your ear has nowhere to go but the bass, and that is clearly the point.

It lands on EXE AUDIO on October 16, 2026, with a steady 127 BPM pulse underneath.

It comes out on Solèy on the 16th of October, and it's built to be played out while the sun's still doing something. The drums hold off long enough that you quit expecting them, which sounds like a complaint and isn't, by the time they land you've stopped bracing for the drop and started moving instead. Terrace music, the hour before the room gets properly loud, not after.

Six tracks, and the whole thing keeps moving. Bright harmonic lines sit close to the front, and the drums never really settle into a comfortable spot, they nudge at you instead. 'yabai' sets the mood at 127 BPM in D# major, all shimmer and forward lean, the kind of thing that keeps a room turning without a big gesture.

Then 'shibakude' comes in with ATALAZ and throws the balance off. 138 BPM, C# minor, percussive and sparse, it breaks the flow of the set instead of building it, and it's the odd one out on a tracklist that otherwise holds together. 'Black Jack' with ROTZZZ pulls back to 123 BPM in D# major, and here's where a pattern shows: the vocal chop under the drop is the same one from 'shibakude,' and it reads as deliberate, a signature threading through the record. Which is a better idea than it sounds on paper, and the record is stronger for it.

The track is a sparse, percussive-led thing, bright on top, and it moves, 120 BPM, F minor, and it doesn't hang around. Two minutes fifty five and it doesn't pad itself out. It does the one idea and gets out before it repeats. A Dance record on Dirty Workz, out October 8, 2026.

That's the part that got me, it reads like someone who could coast on the name and chose not to.

Braaheim delivers 'Informer' on Soave Records: percussive-led, bright, steady, at 124 BPM in G minor. There's a break in the middle where the bassline actually drops out for a second and comes back changed, not just louder, actually different. And it sits right there, loud enough to still be a record, quiet enough that you can have the conversation over it.

There's a version of this record that's all sunshine and no shadow, and that isn't the one Uoak made. 'Summer Breeze' keeps its warmth, but it's a harmonic-led record in G sharp minor, dark and sparse, and the shadow is in the harmony.

This is a three am record. Not the comedown exactly, more the part after, when the room has thinned out and the people still there are the ones who came for the music. The extended mix stretches the idea to 5:24 against the original's 3:39, and that patience is the best thing in it. Released September 25 on Sekora Chill.

There's a regular version and an extended one, and the extended is obviously the one. Three names are credited here, Patrick Topping, Rebūke and 1111, and who did what isn't mine to guess at.

The extended runs 5:19 at 128 BPM in A major, and what it does with that time is the whole thing for me. It's percussion led, bright and sparse, so nothing in it can coast. Every part has to earn its place.

The sparseness isn't laziness, it's room. I kept waiting for it to feel thin and it never did. Whatever's in there has a job.

My track two rule usually holds. I went in assuming it would hold again this time too, same as it usually does, and it didn't. 'Too High' is the title track, and it's the stronger of the two, which almost never happens. 'Aloft' opens the release, and it's fine. Pleasant. Forgettable. It's got that clean, airy Marsh signature, the kind of thing that sits comfortably in a mix but doesn't ask anything of you.

'Too High', though, does something with the low end that 'Aloft' never gets to. There's a weight to it, a push. The melody is still recognizably Marsh, but the bassline is doing the heavy lifting, and it's the kind of track that makes you want to rewind and hear exactly where that rumble sits. It's a welcome surprise from the producer who's been leaning into his softer side lately.

Does Solomun need us? He plays Destino every summer, and the honest answer is probably not. Here's 'Raider on the Storm' anyway, a single on his own Diynamic imprint.

The biggest name we've ever had cross this desk, Solomun's latest lands as a short, angled piece rather than a skip, he asked for it to be kept deliberately short. It was mixed hot, really hot, obviously built for a big room system.

Even blown out through garbage speakers, you can still hear that the low end is doing something with the chord underneath instead of just being loud for the sake of being loud. One of the open decks nights I've been doing in Bushwick lately came in handy for that test, but the takeaway is simple: this is a club tool with substance.