Nothing Breaks Our Little Hearts In Two

Gena “Circlez”

Every sound in “Circlez” is so gorgous and precisely calibrated – that organ tone with the just-right level of warmth radiating through the mix, the subtle high-pitched clatter punctuating Karriem Riggins’ percussion, the piano part mixed to sound as though it’s bleeding in from the next room, the heavily reverbed yells on the outro. It makes me wonder how much of Gena’s decisions came quickly from raw instinct, and how much may have been sweated over in the studio. Not that it makes a lot of difference – if it’s more the latter, they’ve achieved the illusion of convincing me that it could have just happened this way.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Beba Rexha “Çike Çike”

“Çike Çike” owes a lot to early 90s house music and “Vogue”/Erotica-era Madonna without feeling particularly retro. Some of that is in the nuances of production, but I think it’s mostly because every era of electronic music seems to coexist naturally in a “time is a flat circle” streaming economy. Every sound is up for grabs, every sound has its audience, and everything can be a hit at once, so the micro-fashions that dictated electronic music for ages don’t matter as much as they used to. And besides, Bebe Rexha is a pop artist – she’s mixing and matching, jumping on whatever works for her. And truly, I’ve never heard a song make more sense for her. It’s trashy in the best way, and so particular to her Albanian/NYC roots. It sounds like she’s letting people in on a fun secret world.

Buy it from Amazon.