Seoul-based producer and DJ SUNGYOO has been selected for Spotify’s Fresh Finds Forward Artist Class of 2026, adding another significant milestone to a year that has continued to elevate his profile across electronic music. Fresh Finds Forward is Spotify’s newly launched program…

Unity is easy to flatten into a slogan, especially in music, where a word like oneness can drift toward soft-focus spirituality before it ever has to touch the harder work of living with other people. Ektā gives Madame Gandhi (@madamegandhi)a better frame because the record does…

Robyn, DOG BLOOD, Swedish House Mafia, Zara Larsson, Tiësto, Four Tet, Tove Lo and Soulwax lead the fifth Portola Music Festival at San Francisco’s Pier 80. Portola Music Festival returns to Pier 80 on Saturday, September 26 and Sunday, September 27, 2026, and its fifth lineup ap…

MAXIMILIAN’s Mikrokosmos EP. 8 is the kind of release that immediately tells you what it cares about. Two tracks, vinyl only, 180g pressing, 45 RPM, no sample packs, no digital shortcuts, and an entire production method built around hardware. In a time when most house records are…

Pedro Matias (@pedro.matiasss) has built his catalog across deep, progressive, organic, and melodic house, and his work with Leonardo Britto on the Skyfall EP puts the focus on two records deliberately created from the same musical foundation. “Skyrise” and “Skyfall” share many o…

Greggio’s (@_greggio) discussion in the interview we’re about to dive into get at one of the stranger traps in modern production, because almost every tool we use now makes it easier to fix the life out of a record. The grid gets tighter, the transient gets cleaner, the mix gets…

Myselor’s Cosmic Expression arrives with a scale that feels rare in modern electronic music. Twenty tracks, four prior samplers, nine previously unheard cuts, and an album concept built around transformation, identity, perception, freedom, and self-awareness. That is a lot to hol…

ISMOS’ Abstract Vol. 1 is built around a concept that could easily feel too heavy for a club compilation: your inner world creates your reality. The interesting part is that the label does not try to over-explain that idea and instead it lets ten artists interpret it through mini…

A lot of dance music talks about instinct, but Ciclo’s (@ciclo_music) No Ma Mood EP makes that idea feel more practical than romantic. The Colombian producer is returning to Hottrax for a third release on Jamie Jones’ label, and the title reads like a small refusal: no more makin…

Paul Venus seems to hear songs the way an editor sees a sequence, with the wide shot, the close-up, the pause, the emotional turn, and the one small detail that tells you where the whole thing is supposed to go. That probably starts in Lahaina, where his father ran MCTV-7, where…

Production culture keeps telling artists that the next plug-in, virtual instrument, processing technique, or tutorial could solve the problem in front of them. Max Porcelli places responsibility back on the producer, and the five lessons he shares here center on protecting studio…

Iskarelyn’s Far and Beyond didn’t really start off as an album, and that is part of why the project feels worth leaning into. Ryan Tse first pictured the release as a single for Neverwake Records, a label that helped bring his Iskarelyn project to a wider streaming audience early…

Time Warp will make its Los Angeles debut across two days and three stages at Ace*Mission Studios, with Richie Hawtin, The Martinez Brothers, Ben Klock and Loco Dice heading an extensive house and techno lineup. Time Warp has announced the complete artist lineup for its first Los…

There is a weird pressure on electronic artists right now to become instantly legible before the music has even had a chance to do anything. The look, the content, the logo, the visual language, the quote-unquote thing around the project; all of it can start moving faster than th…

Andrew Bayer will bring A Light That Guides Weary Travelers Home to six North American cities this winter, including Portland, Vancouver, Toronto, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Andrew Bayer is returning to the road with a six-date North American tour built around his fifth studi…

The Cayin HA-1A MK3 is the kind of desktop audio piece that makes the most sense once you stop thinking about headphone amps as purely technical boxes. Yes, it has the specs, the tubes, the output options, the impedance matching, and the compact chassis. The more interesting angl…

Above Photo credit: Helen Perez, Harp Digital Media Beatport Live LA is a good reminder that spatial audio does not have to begin on a giant stage. The company has built a free monthly event space inside its downtown Los Angeles Arts District headquarters, placing DJs close enoug…

Rayne’s “Techno Games” comes from an artist who spent years learning the floor before turning fully toward production. Born in New Jersey, shaped by New York nightlife, and now based in Denver, Rayne brings a long club history into his current run of dark, peak-time techno releas…

The ten-day anniversary season returns to Tulum from December 31, 2026 to January 10, 2027, with a three-event Multipass available now. Zamna Tulum has announced its tenth-anniversary season without naming a single artist, which initially feels like a strange way to introduce one…

U-T and Nikita von Tiraspol’s (@nikitavontiraspol) Nights In Tokyo EP started with a late-night studio meeting at Maison Amper in Tokyo, then split that original idea into three different interpretations. U-T takes the more rhythmic, energetic route, Ko Umehara moves toward minim…

Medieval game audio can go wrong fast. Add a lute, throw birds into the trees, put a few wooden impacts under the UI, and the world may sound old enough on paper while still feeling like a set dressed for the player. Bellwright needed something more patient than that, because its…

Founder Elon Sharar is inviting acquisition discussions around an established browser-based music platform, its audience, and its technology. Chosen Masters founder Elon Sharar is seeking a buyer for the music-technology company he has spent close to ten years developing, with a…

MARNIK (@marnikofficial) have spent the last decade operating at the festival end of electronic music, but the duo’s current phase is moving further into hard dance, techno and neo-rave without abandoning the scale that built their audience in the first place. That evolution now…

Thechi’s Echo State EP starts from a place a lot of producers know but do not always admit: coming back to music after a pause and realizing the old instinct to keep adding more is not always the answer. The London-based artist, born Arjun Yohannan, grew up in Kerala, India, wher…

There is an easy version of a project like TERRA OLYMPIA, and George Voukanos seems aware of it from the start. A Greek composer returns to Ancient Olympia, writes music tied to memory and heritage, invokes mythology, light, landscape, and the Olympic idea, then lets the ancient…

KONEKT’s “WORTH” sits in a lane that more producers are starting to explore: club music with a little romance under the surface. The track blends bass house, slap house, and R&B influence, giving it enough bounce for a dancefloor setting while keeping the mood lighter, warmer, an…

DJ Anguelov’s “No Phone In” starts from an idea that feels obvious until you get into a club and see half the room filming the drop instead of feeling it. The track was made with a lot of energy after the Palma retreat with Suru, where Anguelov spent time around a creative circle…

Purchases Made Through Links In The Piece May Help Support Magnetic At No Extra Cost To You! All Images Throughout Are Property Of All-Time-High Founded by DJ David “EXCEL” Alper and Frank Barouti, the Los Angeles label pulls from vintage clothing, military references, washed fab…

Killed It! Records is continuing to expand beyond BARELY ALIVE with the release of elden’s new ‘POWERTRIP EP’, out now. The project serves as the label’s first standalone release from an artist outside its founders, making it an important early statement for Killed It!’s broader…

Festival packing starts with optimism and ends with someone dragging a cooler across gravel while three tote bags dig into their shoulders. That is the unglamorous part of the weekend nobody puts in the recap. The outfits are planned, the lineup is saved, the campsite is mapped o…

Underground techno usually says the most when there is less for the record to hide behind. Strip the sleeve back, press it to wax, take the titles off the center label, and suddenly the whole thing gets very simple. Either the groove speaks for itself, or it does not. That is the…

The November 28 event pairs a dedicated Tiësto trance set with Aaron Hibell and a focused international lineup at TradeX. Putting Tiësto at the top of a trance lineup means something different in 2026 than it would have twenty years ago, and Dreamstate Vancouver clearly understan…

It is easy to talk about AI in music like it is only a software issue. Faster MIDI generation, smarter arrangement help, cleaner mixes, instant ideas, less staring at a blank project. All of that can sound harmless enough until the shortcut starts reaching into the part of the pr…

Everyone in music says they want discovery, but most discovery systems are better at confirming what has already started moving. Streams, saves, social proof, playlist lift, algorithmic traction — all of it can tell the industry where attention is already gathering. Hype-Index is…

Lloyd Barwood (@lloydbarwoodmusic) wrote “Nothing Like It Was” for a very specific moment: his first set handing the decks over to Sasha at 909 in Liverpool. That context shaped the record from the beginning, with Barwood aiming for the melodic character associated with Sasha’s s…

ELPHNT (@elphntx) has always sat in an interesting corner of music production culture. It is an Ableton-focused project, a collection of Max for Live devices, a teaching platform, a design outlet, a newsletter, a writing practice, and a creative business all at once. For Tom, the…

Nicolas Barnes (@nicolas_barnes_) makes his SATYADGTL debut with Be Calm, a September 11 release that places the Riga-based DJ, producer, and ECOUL SND label head inside the label’s deeper, more restrained lane. The record was written during a period of mental overload, and that…

Hard techno is crowded enough right now that “harder” barely means anything on its own. The real question is whether an artist can make pressure feel authored rather than anonymous. That is the line LAYBE (@laybemusic) seems to be chasing in 2026, moving away from a wider explora…

Most people do not stop making things because they stopped caring. They stop because the act of returning starts to feel too loaded. The guitar becomes a test of whether you are still a musician. The blank page becomes a referendum on whether you were ever any good. The project w…

The complete set times place a three-hour-plus Pretty Lights performance at the center of every night in Buena Vista. The first thing that jumps out in Yahn Dawn’s 2026 set times is how little the event tries to cram onto its Main Stage. LP Giobbi opens Friday with her Dead House…

FIFI FORTE’s (@fififortedj) Gain My Trust EP lands on Diggin’ Records with the kind of house music that does not need to over-explain itself. The London-based DJ and producer keeps the release tight: three cuts, rolling drums, deep basslines, crisp percussion, and enough ’90s hou…

A promoter can book an artist, sell the date, run the room, post the photographs, and close the accounts. Once the lights come up, though, the developing artist may leave with little that can support the next booking. Photographs and phone clips document the date, yet most of its…

MARS (@iammarsofficial) enters the scene with “Techno Dungeon,” a high-energy collaboration with DJ HPNOTIC built around relentless grooves, driving percussion, and a four-on-the-floor pulse. The track is designed as an invitation: leave the outside world at the door, step into t…

Enzo Vood (@enzo_vood) recently appeared alongside Aaron Suiss on “Self-Actualization,” released this summer on Magnetic Magazine Recordings. The track gave the label another patient, melodic club record built for gradual movement rather than cheap impact, which makes Enzo’s inte…

There are plenty of labels that begin with a genre tag and build outward from there, though Coexist came from a clearer personal need. Brian Zajak, known through his Fejká project, had spent years making electronic music that moved between ambient restraint and club-focused momen…

Australian DJ and multi-instrumentalist Timmy Trumpet has released a new single, Roses, recorded in collaboration with fast-rising producer bradeazy and featuring vocalist Richard Judge. The track is melodic, club-ready, and noticeably warmer in sound than the artist’s usual outp…

Remember when Music Marketing meant a poster campaign, a radio ad, and crossing your fingers? Yeah, neither do most people reading this. The rulebook for breaking an artist has been rewritten so many times in the last few years that “the playbook” is really more of a scrapbook no…

Getting an artist interview published usually starts well before you email an editor, because one of the biggest misconceptions I see on the receiving end of music pitches is that a new release automatically gives a publication enough material for an interview. A single coming ou…

Getting your music covered by a blog in 2026 is still possible, and I want to start there because I spend enough time on the receiving end of music submissions to know how quickly artists can convince themselves that editors no longer listen to unsolicited music. We do… or maybe…

Above Photo Credit: Miguel Muzquiz Chris Liebing, Maddix, ØTTA and SPFDJ join the Austin festival, with two curated Frequency takeovers giving ticket buyers a clearer reason to compare Saturday and Sunday. Seismic Dance Event 9.0 has added Chris Liebing, Maddix, ØTTA, SPFDJ and t…

TVs keep showing up in creative rooms for a reason, and it has less to do with passive watching than with atmosphere. A studio is rarely only a studio anymore. For many producers, writers, DJs, editors, and artists, the same room has to work as a bedroom, listening space, writing…

Photo credit: Iris Wang CAPYAC have always sounded like they are trying to sneak a real feeling into a party before anyone notices. That is still the best read on “Big CrUsh En3rgY,” their new single, which lands as a late-summer burst of funk guitar, indie electronic heat, and f…

Rteph88 and Steve Cobby’s Seven Dogs is interesting because it does not treat chill-out, downtempo, and jazztronica like old rooms that need restoring. It treats them like living spaces that can still be rearranged. Released August 21, 2026 via Oathcreations, the four-track EP br…

Lisa McGlynn’s “Alien” is built from fragments that do not fully explain themselves. The Scottish singer, songwriter, and electronic producer draws on alternative electronic music, post-punk, industrial club pressure, dance production, and atmospheric vocal writing, but the track…

Prisma Deer and Vishap’s “It’s Jazz” is the kind of house record that tells you what it is paying respect to before the kick has to do much explaining. The title is direct, the source language is clear, and the production does not try to hide its affection for jazz behind a layer…

Núr Moody’s Vanity, Enemy. is a debut EP about losing perspective, then slowly getting it back. The Barcelona producer, songwriter, and vocalist built the five-track record from her bedroom, writing, recording, and producing the whole project herself before finishing the mix with…

Mike Taylor’s “LOVE.” is a comeback of sorts, but not in the obvious sense. He never disappeared. His catalog already includes the RIAA Gold-certified “Everything Black” with Unlike Pluto, now past 382 million Spotify streams, and his collaboration on Afrojack’s “SummerThing!” pu…

High winds damaged the Harrogate site less than 24 hours before 6,000 house fans attended its third edition. The festival returns to The Stray on September 4, 2027. Less than 24 hours before 6,000 house fans were due at The Stray, high winds brought down the Love to be… Festival…

303GREG’s “All It Takes” works best when you hear it as a rhythm-first record from someone who has spent a long time understanding what percussion does to a room. The Sydney-based producer and composer comes from a background in classical percussion and drumming, with experience…

Paul Oakenfold has spent decades moving electronic music forward, but the Mission Underground album finds him doing something more interesting than simply revisiting his history. Released on Perfecto Records, the album connects the emotional architecture of classic trance with th…