Friday Dance Music Guide: The Week’s Best New Tracks From Kito & Grimes, Tiësto & Mathame and More

This week in dance music: We sat down with LP Giobbi to discuss her Deadhead roots and her new album; Moby told us about reinventing some of his biggest hits with an orchestra and happily being in a “banal” phase of life; Portola dropped a hot to the touch lineup for its fall festival in San Francisco and we got to know rising star salute ahead of their debut set at EDC Las Vegas this weekend.

And speaking of EDC! The festival’s mastermind Pasquale Rotella warned of likely travel delays in getting to the event, and ODESZA announced that a film based on their 2022 record-setting The Last Goodbye tour is coming to theaters on July 7.

Is there more? Of course there’s more. Let’s get it into.

Kito & Grimes, “Cold Touch”

The Artists: The Australian born, Los Angeles-based producer Kito, along with our elfin queen Grimes

The Label: Mad Decent

The Spiel: Grimes made headlines last month with the announcement of her AI voice generated Elf.Tech — open-source software that allows anyone to sample her voice for free — now she’s making actual music with it. Made by the two artists remotely, “Cold Touch” whips up elements of trance, breaks and early ’80s rave into an urgent anthem and marks the first official release on Grimes’ AI artist profile.

The Producer Says: “‘Cold Touch’ is a song written from the perspective of an AI trying to understand love,” says Kito. “I think our slightly weird and awkward relationship with using AI for creative expression is muddled because as things come out, we don’t actually know what involvement AI had, and we’re still figuring it out in real time.”

The Vibe: You’ve fallen hopelessly in love with our AI overlords.

Tiesto & Mathame, “Feel Your Ghost”

The Artists: The perpetually prolific Tiësto and Italian duo Mathame, the latter on a long hot streak of hits, including last year’s Camelphat collab “Believe.”

The Label: Astralwerks

The Spiel: Trance blazed back into the mainstream with the release of Calvin Harris and Ellie Goulding’s “Miracle” (which this week gave Harris the most No. 1s of all time on Dance/Mix Show Airplay), and certainly no one is better equipped to meet this resurgence of the genre moment than Tiësto — who, after all, pioneered the damn genre back in the ’90s. Here the circle also closes for Mathame (composed of brothers Matteo and Amedeo Giovanelli — get it, Mathame?) who listened to Tiësto’s trance output via cassette back in high school. Together they make a darkly pulsing anthem with breathy vocals and an expertly placed rave siren.

The Vibe: Dancing with your eyes closed at 3 a.m.

Mau P, “Your Mind Is Dirty“

The Artists: Dutch wunderkind Mau P

The Label: John Summit‘s Off The Grid Records

The Spiel: Certainly one of the hottest producers of the moment, Mau P delivers the third single of his career with “Your Mind Is Dirty.” (Although let us not forget his recent remix of the aforementioned Calvin x Ellie banger.) With the lyrics limited to the sentiments about the titular “dirty, filthy” thoughts, the song leaves the relatively spare tech house production to do a lot of the work — until the end, when the progressively ramped-up rave production melds with some less-than-subtle moaning.

The Vibe: You’ve ingested a lot of drugs from Amsterdam and are well into hour seven on the dancefloor.

Seth Troxler & HoneyLuv, “Sex & The City”

The Artists: Everyone’s favorite dancefloor eccentric Seth Troxler and rising house queen HoneyLuv.

The Label: This track marks the re-launch of Troxler and the Martinez Brothers’ Tuskegee Music, founded as a home for BIPOC talent and back after a four year hiatus.

The Spiel: Mau P’s mind may be dirty, but on their first ever collab HoneyLuv and Troxler get a lot more overtly lascivious with a smooth as silk production sampling Chicago house legend Paul Johnson’s 1998 “So Much,” which delivers a string of breathy queries we’re just going to let you listen to yourself. Trust that the bassline on this one is just as seductive.

The Vibe: Friday night in.

Poolside Feat. Mazy, “Each Night”

The Artists: Longtime L.A.-based chillout fav Poolside

The Label: Counter Records

The Spiel: Jeffery Paradise brings back his now one-man Poolside project with “Each Night,” which evokes the maximalist bliss of “Good Vibrations” era Beach Boys with a lush layer of slow-rolling synth that washes over your ears like a warm bath, or perhaps a well-heated pool. The release marks Poolside’s first official signing with a major label, after previously releasing music via Paradise’s own Pacific Standard Time.

The Producer Says: “Well, after 10 years of meeting with record labels, I had a meeting that changed everything,” says Paradise. “Instead of talking about hits, radio or TikTok, we talked about music – imagine that! Ninja Tune/Counter Records suggested getting weirder, experimenting, digging deeper and ignoring the rules. I couldn’t believe my ears. It was the polar opposite of every other meeting I’ve ever taken. It was about going deeper, not wider; it was about what was important for Poolside as an artist and the legacy of the art.”

The Vibe: Pleasantly stoned on a sunny Saturday afternoon.