Aluna has just released a new soft head-bop track titled “Ride or Die”. This track is very well put together and offers a pretty good representation of what has been going on in popular music in the past five years or so.

It's as if musical internet historians have dug up every niche old EDM genre and collectively had the thought, “I wonder how this would sound if it had better sounds and vocals”.

While the track features a classic house EDM drop, it's mixed differently from a typical house track. With more bass, more "oomph", and a touch of murkiness, it borrows a little from the current genre of Phonk as well. Phonk is known for its straightforwardness, but the way the sounds are put together in “Ride or Die” gives the song a lot of body.

I don’t know if you remember channels like “Monstercat” or UKF Drum & Bass. These YouTube and media channels posted some of the biggest EDM bangers with vocals at the time. A big difference between songs like “Ride or Die” or a track that would have popped up on these classic EDM channels 8-12 years ago, is that those older tracks often were made with sampled vocals from an already released song, like how Hip-Hop used to use more obvious samples. This gave the tracks a signature “sampled” sound, where the chopped vocal parts from the original song stood out and had more contrast against the EDM track which was created after the vocals were recorded. One thing that you wouldn’t get as commonly during this period, is artists who both knew how to create EDM tracks and also lay down banging pop vocals on those same tracks. I think the availability of technology has helped a lot to drive this trend. I think it is just beautiful and Aluna’s Ride or Die is a good example of this. I could write a whole lot more about this, but to summarize, I just love it. 

Lastly, I think our love for bass frequencies has grown with the improvement of headphone and speaker technology. Bass just feels good. Some would call it an infatuation rather than a rational love, but either way that is where the trend is, and has been for some time. I would say some rap artists might be credited for being pioneers in driving sub bass-heavy 808 drums to the top of the pop charts. Aluna and her production partner Joseph Ashworth make use of this.

What Aluna has created is an extremely tasteful blend of various musical elements currently trending in the music scene, some of which I've mentioned. This song is undeniably trendy and brimming with energy. Once you start listening to "Ride or Die", time will fly by. So, I would argue that giving it just one play could hardly hurt.

Author: Peter Källman

Peter Källman is a writer from Sweden who loves playing in bands, writing reviews and going to live shows!