#44 Feat. Staff Picks in Indie Dance

Imagine a trip through the Alps guided by elegant dance music. Now let Nayan Soukie - better known as Amount - be your tour guide. His warmly awaited return to the Frank Music label features three brand-new dance tracks. Alpe Adria as a starter is modern House Music all the way, yet with a very subtle twist. The buildup is guided by an appealing voice that never breaks through but is always present. Then the piano emerges in the break, and suddenly youve reached the summit - the horizon wide open, skies bright and endless. Palmanova follows in the same path. The pads will guide you like a fluffy breeze to the next destination. Villach, however, takes things up and comes across as even a little trance-tinged. Hiking - or even better - dancing with Amount feels like floating on a cloud. Now make yourself comfortable.

Amount

#46 Feat. Banner in Ambient / Experimental

Machine music, yes, but reimagined through a deeply human lens. Matthias Vogts latest work hums with circuitry, yet it breathes, stretches, and falters in ways the quantised world forgot were possible. Theres no grid here, no cold precision, no recycled loops of cultural nostalgia. Instead, Vogt crafts sound in its purest form: unsampled, unbound, and untethered from the genre architectures that usually hold electronic music in check. Recorded entirely solo, this album is less a collection of tracks than a solitary ascent. Vogt climbs beyond the machinery of club tropes, jazz improvisations, and urban ambience toward something more elemental. At its peak, the music feels alpine: clean air, open expanse, the flicker of sunlight refracted through a thin atmosphere. Pieces like Resilience and Our Vivid Memories move with a quiet, unhurried vitality, ethereal yet muscular, contemplative yet alive. This is synthesizer music, but not in the lineage of minimalism or retro futurism. Vogts compositions are introspective and focused. When the album reaches Love Is A Pure Sensation and A Perfect Picture, two luminous hymns to tenderness, Vogt reveals another influence, an echo of Paddy McAloons romantic architecture filtered through the circuitry of the self. The closing moments feel almost deliberate in their openness. This is not closure, but continuation, a door left ajar. Vogts journey through sound, solitude, and synthesis doesnt end here; it merely pauses at a plateau, the air thinning, the horizon still calling.

Matthias Vogt

#46 Feat. New Releases in Ambient / Experimental

Machine music, yes, but reimagined through a deeply human lens. Matthias Vogts latest work hums with circuitry, yet it breathes, stretches, and falters in ways the quantised world forgot were possible. Theres no grid here, no cold precision, no recycled loops of cultural nostalgia. Instead, Vogt crafts sound in its purest form: unsampled, unbound, and untethered from the genre architectures that usually hold electronic music in check. Recorded entirely solo, this album is less a collection of tracks than a solitary ascent. Vogt climbs beyond the machinery of club tropes, jazz improvisations, and urban ambience toward something more elemental. At its peak, the music feels alpine: clean air, open expanse, the flicker of sunlight refracted through a thin atmosphere. Pieces like Resilience and Our Vivid Memories move with a quiet, unhurried vitality, ethereal yet muscular, contemplative yet alive. This is synthesizer music, but not in the lineage of minimalism or retro futurism. Vogts compositions are introspective and focused. When the album reaches Love Is A Pure Sensation and A Perfect Picture, two luminous hymns to tenderness, Vogt reveals another influence, an echo of Paddy McAloons romantic architecture filtered through the circuitry of the self. The closing moments feel almost deliberate in their openness. This is not closure, but continuation, a door left ajar. Vogts journey through sound, solitude, and synthesis doesnt end here; it merely pauses at a plateau, the air thinning, the horizon still calling.

Matthias Vogt

#46 Feat. Banner in Ambient / Experimental

Machine music, yes, but reimagined through a deeply human lens. Matthias Vogts latest work hums with circuitry, yet it breathes, stretches, and falters in ways the quantised world forgot were possible. Theres no grid here, no cold precision, no recycled loops of cultural nostalgia. Instead, Vogt crafts sound in its purest form: unsampled, unbound, and untethered from the genre architectures that usually hold electronic music in check. Recorded entirely solo, this album is less a collection of tracks than a solitary ascent. Vogt climbs beyond the machinery of club tropes, jazz improvisations, and urban ambience toward something more elemental. At its peak, the music feels alpine: clean air, open expanse, the flicker of sunlight refracted through a thin atmosphere. Pieces like Resilience and Our Vivid Memories move with a quiet, unhurried vitality, ethereal yet muscular, contemplative yet alive. This is synthesizer music, but not in the lineage of minimalism or retro futurism. Vogts compositions are introspective and focused. When the album reaches Love Is A Pure Sensation and A Perfect Picture, two luminous hymns to tenderness, Vogt reveals another influence, an echo of Paddy McAloons romantic architecture filtered through the circuitry of the self. The closing moments feel almost deliberate in their openness. This is not closure, but continuation, a door left ajar. Vogts journey through sound, solitude, and synthesis doesnt end here; it merely pauses at a plateau, the air thinning, the horizon still calling.

Matthias Vogt