#3 Feat. Staff Picks in Indie Dance

Two vocal tracks and two instrumentals. The classic EP structure reflects the class act that is Fred Ventura and Paolo Gozzetti. Italoconnection are back at the Bordello weaving their synthesizer magic. And those analogue lines are what immediately wash over the listener in Like A Star. Crisp percussion and sailing melodies break to a glorious hook before Venturas unmistakable voice takes hold. Paying homage to Moroders From Here To Eternity, Italoconnection deliver a vocoder dipped love affair as smouldering vocals pitch ever higher. The instrumental strips back all lyrics, but allows the breathy keys to remain and keep that human touch amidst the addictive chords and rich textures. Bold machine brass introduces Make It Real. These blasts form the melodic backbone for this ballad to self-belief where Venturas impassioned words are impeccably coupled with Gozzettis sparkling synthwork. That synthwork comes to the fore in the finale. With lyrics pared back, the machines sing a different song as that energy packed melody is charged with even more intensity. Quality through and through, as always with Italoconnection.

Italoconnection

#18 Feat. Staff Picks in Indie Dance

Hyperstellar returns to Bordello A Parigi with a nocturnal and deeply magnetic EP. In For a Flash captures the fleeting beauty of a moment stolen from the night, the tension of a glance that will never return, the sensation of having loved inside a dream. The record carves out a singular aesthetic through new wave, shady atmospheres, and early electronic influences. The eponymous track, In For a Flash, opens the record like a sudden vision: a burst of light in the dark, propulsive, yet already fading. From its fatalist urgency to the longing of The Dance We Never Had, each piece suggests a different facet of the same mirage. Surrender unfolds like a slow implosion, a toxic war between release and control, while LAmour sur Saturne drifts endlessly in a suspended space, like a tale where the impossible is still imagined. Influenced as much by Burial as by New Order, the solitude of classical composers or eccentric glam rock acts, Hyperstellar continues to build his artistry on numbers, and intimate constellations.

Hyperstellar