Top 5 Releases 10-4-25
STYLEX (UK): Turning Heat Into Beat
There are songs that just make you move, and then there are songs that get the room to move. STYLEX's latest single Feel The Heat on Krafted Digital does just that. It's almost a pulse rather than a song, a manufactured frenzy of the basslines, percussion, and nights-after nights' tension that is well-suited for the concrete dance floor and red lights. The UK producer has been honing his craft in the house and tech house audience with a groove-heavy, attitude-filled sound, but the thing that really distinguishes him is how he integrates those retro influences, Mark Knight's hard-as-nails drum programming, Martin Ikin's push into something living and current.
Prior to the studio, STYLEX discovered the true language of dance floors at Hakkasan, where he honed his timing as a resident DJ, knowing a crowd doesn't merely listen, they respond. His radio show, Tech House Unleashed on Data Transmission, is just as frenetic, a transmission of sweat and beat that never pauses to catch breath. Feel The Heat is followed by a Eastern Resident remix, turning the track into something trance-like and liquid, the post-dawn reflection of the main set tempest.
If you’ve been hooked on the industrial pulse of D. Ramirez or the late-night swagger of James Hurr, this release deserves a spot on your queue. It hits that sweet spot between club and consciousness, like the sound you’d catch between sets at Printworks or during the chase scene of a Nicholas Winding Refn film. In a scene obsessed with the next drop, STYLEX reminds us that rhythm is still the real story.
The Shrubs: Surf, Static, and Second Winds
The Shrubs are not shy about nostalgia — they're bringing it back with a nod. Fall Behind replaces their former slow-burning melancholy with a spoonful of surf rock that seems to have splashed straight from a VHS that has seen some sun. It's close, brightly hued, and low-key, with guitars that shine like sunlight off chrome and a rhythm section that rides the self-assured laconicism of a band that's found its groove. From their own studio, Flowers on the Wall, the song sounds as though it was made in their living room, all warmth and hiss, the kind of glitches that make old records sound genuine.
You can see The Ventures in their twang, perhaps a trace of The Bambi Molesters in the phrasing with reverb, but The Shrubs don't use the retro hand for novelty. They use it for feel. There's a feeling of camaraderie in their sound, the sibling rapport between Josh and Miguel, the comfortable groove that comes from playing with someone who gets your sentence done for you.
It’s hard not to think of Fall Behind in cinematic terms. Imagine a Sofia Coppola character taking a solo drive through small-town streets at sunset, or an early Tarantino montage where everything seems to hum with hidden energy. If you’ve had La Luz or Allah-Las on repeat, this one will slip right into your rotation. The Shrubs might call Houston home, but this record feels like the coast, endless, free, and full of echo.
Stephanie Happening: Soundtracking the Self
There is something enthralling about Stephanie Happening's Smash Hits. It hovers midway between confession and film anthem, throbbing to synths that glitter like city lights at 3 a.m. The Londoner has a talent for rendering weighty subjects, identity, trauma, survival, into songs that could soundtrack a whole film. It is music that wants to heal but will not shy away from the grime.
Stephanie's music is in the tradition of artists such as MUNA, Chvrches, and Christine and the Queens, smartly emotive, deeply personal, but built for the headliner. You can picture Smash Hits ending a teen coming-of-age film or foreshadowing a moment of quiet rebellion on Euphoria. There's revolution in every note, but release too, the kind that creeps up on you when you can finally lay down the veneer of all being okay.
Dissociative Identity Disorder chronicler that they are, Stephanie imposes fragmentation upon them. Their music is not chaos but control, a mosaic cut of existence. The production is vivid, but the voice slices through like truth in breaking silence. If ever you've ever needed music that's raw but cinematic, Smash Hits is that outsider type of song that doesn't capture the moment so much as lingers with you long after the lights remain on.
wht.rbbt.obj: Noir Rock and the Final Station
wht.rbbt.obj of Chicago are wrapping up their NATO Call Sign Trilogy with Oscar Bravo Juliett, and the third act of this cinematic movie sounds like it's been in the works in hideaway. Every song has the sound of being encoded, full of peril and desire, a mix of raw soul and rock grime native to smoky rooms and final cigarettes. Frank and River Rabbitte, a married couple, exchange tension and chemistry, their music caught between Amy Winehouse at her most provocative and The Black Keys at their grimiest.
The album closes out a stretch started by Whiskey Hotel Tango and Romeo Bravo Bravo Tango, and this third installment comes along like closing credits ,black, raucous, and lovely in its destruction. Oh, and Monsters of Nothing (The FURY Edition) is on the way, a collaboration with Chi-town's FURY that distills their noir to something more electric.
You might just picture Oscar Bravo Juliett cutting a neo-noir clip, envision Drive, Sin City, or a late-night Peaky Blinders offshoot. It's music with the rhythm of the city and the pain of the people still with it. If rock still has peril attached to it, wht.rbbt.obj show that it has not been domesticated.
Rusty Reid: The Long Shadow of The Unreasonables
Sometimes an album seems to have waited for the world to catch up with it. Rusty Reid's The Unreasonables was recorded years and years ago, sat in a dusty corner waiting to be released, a melodic rock time bomb that cuts just as cleanly through today's playlists. It's huge and stripped and feeling, like something that easily could have nestled on either side of Tom Petty or The Cars on a late-80s mix tape.
Rusty, operating out of the Pacific Northwest these days, abandons the political and philosophical bent of earlier work for something more stripped-down. The songs are ad-lib, lust, attitude, the strained nervous jump of a band that played because they wanted to. Attitude Change rocks like a saloon song, Piece of the Action hangs loose with Stones-like cool, and Shock Me bangs with a jukebox-and-late-night-play beat.
You can stack The Unreasonables back-to-back with Fleetwood Mac during the Rumours era or early Cheap Trick, rock filth sheathed in pop savvy. It's easy to imagine the album restored to life in some akin to Almost Famous or an updated Stranger Things set piece, distilling the mood of reckless abandon. For a forty-year-lost record, it sounds incredibly vital, a rediscovery that sounds like a reminder of the way things were back in the good old days of rock and roll before we all became too clever with it.
Follow Our Playlist For More Music!