Jaye listened to the Sentimental Ultra singles last Saturday and kept it simple: “musically well put together, nice vibe, mix was smooth and energetic feel.” That’s the whole case for DJ Heartstring in one sentence — and today, the album it was all building toward is out.

Sentimental Ultra is the Berlin duo’s debut album, fifteen tracks on Steel City Dance Discs, out today, November 13. Jonas Hellberg and Leo Brede have spent five years building their Trance Dance Music sound — euphoric, fast, emotionally direct — from 2021’s Destiny of the Moment and Eternal Euphoria EPs through last year’s You Are The Sun, I Am The Sky, and the guest list on this record tells you how far that sound has travelled: Sam Gellaitry, DMA’S, KennyHoopla, Baugruppe90, Spriitzz, SWIM, Saidah, Monk, 3NDLES5, David Jackson. The album cover was shot by Ewen Spencer, the photographer behind Skins and The Streets’ visual world — a fitting match for a record that draws its inspiration from football-hooligan and skateboarding subculture, the hard and the soft at once.

“So Many Things to Say,” the Gellaitry collab, is the track to start with. Released as a single on September 4, it does what the duo do best: trance velocity with a pop heart, melancholy and euphoria in the same breath, a vocal that gives the rush somewhere to land. The duo recorded it in a day at Sam’s house and home studio — “a perfect halfway meeting between our two styles,” they said — and you can hear that ease in it: a pulsating, pop-tinged track built for inside and outside the club alike. It’s the sound of a club record that remembers the drive home afterwards — the befores and the afters, as the duo put it — and Gellaitry’s presence lifts it from a DJ track into a song. (The single itself dates to September, so this is an album pick, not a brand-new single — the story is the record, out today, and “So Many Things to Say” is its brightest doorway in.)

The rise behind it is real. BBC Radio 1 Future Dance Stars in 2023, a Boiler Room debut at AVA Festival, a Melbourne Boiler Room set past a million views, an Essential Mix, remixes for Charli XCX, Sam Smith, Romy, Sugababes and Empire of the Sun, and a summer of landmark festival plays — Awakenings, Lost Village, Movement Detroit, ARC Chicago — capped by a BBC Radio 1 Residency this month. Sentimental Ultra is the debut proper, and “So Many Things to Say” is its brightest doorway in. Start here, then stay for the whole fifteen.

LISTEN

Bandcamp — Sentimental Ultra (album)