There's a curious decision built into 'Summer Sessions 2026, Vol. 1': the record runs its own route twice. The first lap, from the opener through track ten, travels almost entirely in club mixes; the second retraces the course in original versions. Heard front to back, it plays like one summer day told first from the booth and then in pocket-sized form.
The route opens at 124 BPM with the instrumental of Angelo Maria Calderano's 'Dreaming', and dawn arrives right after: Beat.pacific's 'Blue Sun' drops to 120 and slips into a major key, first-light deep house. From there the climb makes sense: Seven Cubes' 'Sweets' and ACRAFT's 'Visions' push the melodic stretch toward 128, DAWRYGUY's 'Lift Your Hands Up' throws in the UK garage swerve, and a block of house at 124-125 carries the body of the trip, with Jesse Lock's 'Yaki Soba' as the longest cut on the record, nearly seven minutes of development. The first finish line comes at 140: PartyBooze's 'Take Your Body Higher', twelve BPM above the next-fastest thing here, ends the lap at a sprint.
The second pass covers the same ground in a different light. 'Blue Sun', 'Sweets' and company return in their original forms, shorter and more direct —Jayson Miro's 'If You Need It' clocks in at two and a half minutes— and three new stops appear: Kinetic Wave Orchestra's 'The Music In You', the tech house of Tollbooth Sound's 'Marites' and Lebedevich's 'Repeat Mode', the trip's only minimal detour. 'Dreaming', in fact, shows up three times on the map —instrumental, club and original— like the landmark that confirms you're still on course. And the closer is PartyBooze at 140 once more: the record ends exactly where it had already peaked.
Context helps read the play: Play Records is the Canadian label founded in 1996 by Melleefresh and DJ Spydabrown, the same house that released much of deadmau5's early work. There are no names of that caliber here yet, and that's exactly the point: a dozen projects to discover, served in a format that invites you to ride the same summer twice and keep whichever lap suits you best.
Sources: Play Records
