Mydnight

After the indie lean of his 2021 debut Born a Loser, Myd’s second album plants both feet on the dance floor. Mydnight channels three years of worldwide touring and DJing into a soundtrack that plays like a night in his idiosyncratic universe—vibrant, high-energy and just plain fun. The French producer has long embraced spontaneity in his process, chasing “happy accidents” to surprising ends. He began “The Wizard” as a joke, but layers of harmonies and Nigerian vocal samples turned it into a hypnotic peak-time whopper. Its urgent energy also reveals his headspace at the time: After losing his hard drive weeks before the album was due, it’s one of the tracks he rebuilt during a week-long livestream. Elsewhere, the stuttering house of “Make Me Feel Alive” beams with rosy-cheeked exhilaration, and “In My Head” blends steaming, squiggling and swirling textures into an open-air anthem. Among Mydnight’s playful grooves, the French-touch serenade “Song for You”, introspective “Be Someone New” and uplifting “All That Glitters Is Not Gold” provide moments of tenderness. Even the simple refrain of “So High” (“Now I feel so high/With you all/Used to feel so down/On my own”) shows that dance music can be as sentimental as it is sweaty, and as intimate as it is communal.