A Thousand Lies takes the long way to its peak, and I have come to think the patience is the whole point. The Berlin duo built a trance record that refuses to rush, holding the tension across the verse until a spoken-word line from Saidah turns the breakdown into something close to a prayer before the synths finally bloom.
What got me was the second voice. Tommy O’Dell of the Australian rock band DMA’S sings the chorus, and his raw, slightly frayed delivery sits strangely beautiful against peak-time trance arps. The drop is pure euphoria, those uplifting plucks climbing while the rock vocal aches over the top, and the two halves should clash and instead lift each other. It earns its climax instead of just arriving there.
This is a sunrise-set record, the one that lands when the sky starts to go pale and you are not ready for the night to end. On the collaboration, DJ Heartstring said it was a long time in the making, starting over a year earlier with completely different vocals. It is their second release on Steel City Dance Discs. Hear more of the duo on the hub.
A Thousand Lies is out now on Steel City Dance Discs. Sit with it from the top.
