10 under-the-radar club tracks you need to hear in April 2018

For Club Use Only is your one-stop guide to the best underground dance music from across the world. Each month, The Astral Plane’s Gabe Meier forecasts the next wave of sounds due to break through into the mainstream.

A massive compilation, outre club-not-club releases and a new Fade 2 Mind x Qween Beat collaboration dominated our listening this past month. Allergy Season and Discwoman kicked things off with Physically Sick 2 while new releases from Acre, City, Object Blue, Renick Bell, Boe Strummer and Sim Hutchins set the tone for the more experimentally-minded crowd. Meanwhile, BE3K joined up with Fade 2 Mind and Qween Beat for one of the most expressive ballroom outings in recent memory.

v1984 x Ariana/The Weeknd x Celyn June
‘🎀 LUVM3-H4RD// 💖’ (MICHAELBRAILEY ‘waay 2 much’ edit)

The tracklist for MICHAELBRAILEY’s latest edit pack is a sight to behold, packed with incomprehensibly far flung musical choices and rampant emoji usage. Don’t let the Manchester-based artist’s sly humor put you off though, these edits are dense, cerebral affairs that eclipse the creative language from the get go.

DJ NJ DRONE
‘Collapse Syn’ (SLOWED)

DJ NJ Drone’s tracks have always had a wolfish energy to them, manifested in slippery bass lines and speedy tempos and the Detroit-based producer’s latest is no different. Strangely resembling a gnarled hyphy production, the original track was released several days prior in its full, juke-y glory as well.

DJ Nervoso
‘Makexe 4.meu’

DJ Nervoso has been releasing raw, stripped back batida for the better part of a decade and the Lisbon producer’s latest is the best kind of throwback. Nervoso’s tracks off of Dj’S Do Guetto Vol. 1 are also always worth revisiting.

Oli XL
‘Stress Junkie’

Stockholm’s W-I has emerged as a key voice in the leftfield club sphere, consolidating a roster around several new faces that seem primed to set the tone of 2018 and beyond. March saw two excellent releases from the label, the first a sparse, funky number from label boss Oli XL and the second a brand new project from Kid Antoine under his Ingrate moniker.

Aggromance
‘Rotas Cadenas’

HIEDRAH Club de Baile have just released their debut ESQUIRLAS compilation and Buenos Aires’ Aggromance has set off the coming madness with ‘Rotas Cadenas’, referring initially to classic trance sounds before laying into stripped down tresillo and cumbia rhythms.

Ase Manual
‘Break La Body’ (Capital Kaos Remix)

Capital Kaos and Ase Manual have likely appeared in more For Club Use Only columns than just about any other producers and their connection on this “Break La Body” remix is insatiably fun with CK adding the requisite amount of ballroom flair to AM’s slinky original.

Object Blue
‘Act Like It Then’

Initially centered around a Cardi B sample, Object Blue’s ‘Act Like It Then’ brilliantly unfolds over six minutes, unveiling gorgeous interior rhythms that are sure to light up techno-adjacent dancefloors for quite some time.

BugzTheProducer
‘Back Against The Wall’

The new generation of Baltimore club producers is on fire at the moment and BugzTheProducer’s latest is a perfect example of the sound, situated comfortably between classic think break-laden sounds and a more minimal, vocal style.

Rexanthony
‘Capturing Matrix’ (Nahshi Edit)

Taking a cue from Dinamarca’s series of trance classic reboots, Milan’s Nahshi smashes up Rexanthony’s ‘Capturing Matrix’ and a particularly metallic baile funk beat for a proper crying-on-the-dancefloor moment.

Chunyin
‘想起 Look Back On This’

Chunyin, the dance music side project of Sydney’s Rainbow Chan, layers text-to-speech readouts of Facebook notification settings over bouncy digi dub, providing one of the most unsettling riddims since Equiknoxx leapt onto the scene.

Gabe Meier runs The Astral Plane. Find him on Twitter