As I continue to work my way through the feast of sets from Ultra 2015, in preparation for the summer festival season, I turned this week to Andrew Bayer‘s performance at the ASOT stage. While I feel that Bayer’s recent club tracks sound largely the same, and was underwhelmed with his Do Androids Dream EP, I have to say his music really came alive in this expertly crafted Ultra set. I think it goes to show how real the art of crafting a set is. The songs you hear, and the order in which you hear them, create a flow, and subconsciously set up your expectations for what should come next. In this case, the songs from Bayer’s recent EP don’t hold much luster for me when heard on their own, or as one-offs in sets with much different flavors, but when spun together like a quilt, I can follow the patterns with pleasure. Along the way in this Ultra set, there’s some great surprises, including a throwback to Delerium‘s classic, “Silence,” several IDs, and a whole lot of Above & Beyond. The set is also a free download from the UMF2015LiveSets account on SoundCloud. Enjoy.

Speaking of Ultra, it was while rewatching Skrillex‘s excellent set with friends on Saturday that I discovered this gem of a brostep song by JumoDaddy, which Sonny mashed up with his and Kill the Noise‘s own track, “Recess.” I love how it plays with triplets in the depths of that insane drop. It turns out that this is one song of a four part EP, available for streaming on SoundCloud, themed around the four horsemen of the apocalypse. All four tracks share the same gritty, groovy sound, but “Black Horse” is definitely the best of the bunch. Excited to dig deeper into the catalog of this talented Bulgarian producer. 

I found this next one indirectly through Le7els, the Avicii podcast a few weeks back, when he played an ID remix. I couldn’t get the catchy vocals out of my head though, so googled the lyrics to find the original, which features that same insane rap over a deep house beat. It’s been running through my head nonstop for a week. I hope you love it as much as I do. I haven’t heard of Kant before, but a brief look at his SoundCloud shows some solid house tunes in his repertoire.

I’ve got another mix for you. This one I stumbled across organically on Youtube (well, as much as you can find anything organically on the internet), several songs into an autoplaying playlist that started with Swedish House Mafia‘s “Miami 2 Ibiza.” I love me some vocal trance, and the sound of these tracks (many of which were new to me) took me back a few years to when I was new to the scene and basking in the melodies of trance. I was hooked from the moment Gareth Emery‘s classic “Concrete Angel” started playing (admittedly a bit abruptly, though overall I was impressed with the quality of the mix). And how can you not love a tracklist that includes Armin, Arty, Emma Hewitt, RankOne, and more? Thanks to DJ Ash for this great mix.