At 1:37 Contra quits on you. Full tilt one second, kick and bass gone the next, and what is left is a muffled band of midrange with the treble sanded off. It sits there about ten seconds. A kick creeps back around 1:52, I fell for it, and the real one is still forty seconds out.
The main drop lands before the first minute is up, which is early, and it is built almost entirely down low. At 141 BPM the bass rolls hard and everything above 250 Hz is scooped out, so nothing shiny sits on top of it and nothing tries to. The pleasure is all in the weight.
It landed on Musical Freedom, and Armin van Buuren played it on A State of Trance 1279, the Unfiltered special, which is the right room for it: big and dark with no singalong in sight. Jeno and Wempe have made a record together before, and this is the one I would hand anybody who thinks trance has to be pretty.
What I like is how little it flatters you. The last build climbs on treble alone with the bass stripped out, so the kick returning at 2:34 lands as pure relief. Plenty of records at this tempo use that gap to make a promise. This one uses it to take something away.
