Friday Dance Music Guide: The Week’s Best New Tracks From Tycho, Shouse & More
This week in dance music: Disclosure announced a new album, out today (July 14), and a boatload of other new music also dropped alongside it. Let’s get into it.
Shouse feat. House Gospel Choir, “Your Love”
The Label: Hell Beach
The Spiel: Yes, the Australia/New Zealand-born duo is indeed following up their massive hit 2017 “Love Tonight” — which was sent into ubiquity via David Guetta’s 2021 remix — and this year’s second Guetta collab “Live Without Love” with another ode to romance. Featuring the House Gospel Choir (who also figured in The Blessed Madonna’s recently released “Mercy”), the song takes a moody, sort of celestial house production and adds a sort auto-tuned alien voice and then a swarm of very human vocals, which are altogether likely to hit you in your similarly human feels.
The Vibe: What’s not to love?
Tycho, “Time To Run”
The Label: Mom + Pop
The Spiel: The venerable Tycho drops his first track of the year via the chipper, punchy “Time To Run.” Taking influence from the producer born Scott Hansen’s real life love of running — and coming with a sweet and simple running-centric video — the song layers a looped guitar riff and drums with effervescent and quintessentially Tycho electronic elements, building to a quick clip with a smart, bright mood.
The Artist Says: “Music has always served as a kind of meditation for me, long before I started creating it,” says Hansen. “As a competitive runner throughout my early life, I would play back loops of songs in my head to cope with the stress of races, focusing on rhythmic elements to help pace myself and stay calm. There is a unique form of clarity that I have found through the meditative practice of running, it is a fundamentally human experience, and when I feel the deepest connection between the mind, body, and nature. ‘Time to Run’ is my attempt to translate these ideas into music. My goal was to approach the composition from a new angle and let the rhythmic elements take the lead. I cast the melodic elements that have come to define the Tycho sound in a new light by juxtaposing them against a new foundation that takes cues from funk music.”
The Vibe: Runner’s high.
Joel Corry, Icona Pop & Rain Radio, “Desire”
The Label: Atlantic Records
The Spiel: The eternally productive Joel Corry links with Swedish favs Icona Pop and Rain Radio — the secret-ish duo from Fred again.. and his brother Benjy — for a compact (just two minutes and 39 seconds!) but nonetheless full throttle ’90s style house anthem, with a singalong bridge and an earworm melody that’s sure to get lodged in your head, but which is good enough that you won’t actually be annoyed about it.
The Artist Says: “I’m so excited to finally release ‘Desire’ with Icona Pop and Rain Radio”, Corry says in a statement. “It’s been the most requested track ID in my sets for months and always goes off wherever I play it across the globe.”
The Vibe: When the only thing you really desire is to just be dancing hard with your eyes closed in a dark club in the middle of the night.
Baauer feat. Betsy, “Nothing’s Ever Real”
The Label: LuckyMe
The Spiel: Baauer’s house era continues with the bright, piano-heavy “Nothing’s Ever Real.” The track features vocals from Welsh singer Betsy, who insists “’cause nothing’s ever real enough, takе what you want,” and comes with a video in which Baauer revives the sound recording guy character from the video for 2022’s “Let Me Love You” — extending both this persona and the facets of real world romance he captures.
The Vibe: Pretty real, actually.
Duke Dumont feat. Nathan Nicholson, “Losing Control”
The Label: Astralwerks
The Spiel: Duke Dumont never misses and certainly isn’t starting today — with the release of another slice of the dark, transportive, larger-than-life club club fare that is his calling card. Featuring interestingly paced vocals from Nathan Nicholson of The Boxer Rebellion, “Losing Control” is urgent, sophisticated immersive and in possession of a deeply satisfying wind up and release that will surely help any given listener let go at least a little bit.
The Artist Says: “I made this record alongside Nathan Nicholson with my live show experience in mind,” Dumont says in a statement. “Strobe lights, iconic visual, anthemic synth leads, and a vocal hook that conjures paranoia or liberation, depending how you interpret the song. At the festivals I’ve been paying it’s been a big moment for the set.”
The Vibe: Liberation, for sure.
Katie Bain
Billboard