Written by Elijah P. In the crumbling digital landscape of the production’s sonic palette, we hear producer-singer’s jhl and their haunting presence linger in the distance, moving away from the destruction and ultimately building a kind of paradise in the penultimate 2025 single “All Up in Your Head.” Their latest single “Everything you want” harnesses the epic collage maximalism to its core and trades it for a more destructive, deconstructed club approach, meshing and glitching with the risers of trance’s past. At certain points, jhl knows when to tug at your heart through orchestral passages, channeling the seething energy of infatuation and the kind of colliding explosions that wipe the slate clean by the end. Moreover, “Everything You Want” and its R&B inflections make up for the track’s destructive atmosphere, where the former acts as a saving grace from the production’s more self-serious tendencies. As the New Zealand-Filipino creative looks toward working with the Minnesota Orchestra as one of their dream collaborations, their latest single helps channel their inner selves and their craving for physical contact through verse and melody. The chorus resists easy reading, splintered into multiple sections and buried under layers of a complicated composition. Still, there is beauty behind jhl’s madness, and somewhere in the noise, a sense of control. “Everything You Want” lands as an impressive collage club track. With New Zealand in the middle of a wider resurgence in electronic and experimental music, jhl stands out by staying unpredictable. There are too many DJs chasing the same lane, but artists like jhl feel harder to pin down. Support the art & the artist:
Tag: Deconstructed Club
TRACK REVIEW: NICKOTINE – BLOW BLOW
Written by Elijah P. NICKOTINE sits in a strange corner of the electronic dance space. They operate with the focus of a producer who knows exactly where to push the limits and does not bother waiting for permission. Their singles catalog running from 2024 already runs long enough to fuel an entire DJ set, and every release hits with the blunt force of someone who refuses to soften a single edge. The shift from the old Nicko Erotica moniker to NICKOTINE speaks for itself. They never relied on a safe route, and they continue to avoid any lane that asks them to pull back. Their TikTok gives a glimpse of how their mind works: Short clips, tight captions, and a kind of humor that turns the abrasive quality of their songs into a punchline. “BLOW BLOW” doubles down on that attitude. The track launches straight into hedonistic lines and a wall of mechanical horns that grind against buzzing synths. The whole thing comes together like a controlled collision. NICKOTINE built a following through SoundCloud drops that move between techno and deconstructed club. That following continues to grow because each release carries a sharp personality that rarely surfaces in the local dance scene. They have close to 19k followers on TikTok, which raises a bigger question: how many clubs and curators have yet to notice what they can do? The wild part is that they produce everything through a phone. No laptop. No full home setup. Just instinct and speed. Keep NICKOTINE in your sightline now. Support the art & the artist: