Eight minor keys chained together, with not a single major one letting in air: that is what happens between 'The Passenger' and 'Six Minutes To Dance', the stretch that defines this volume's character. D minor, C minor, F minor, E-flat minor, G-flat minor twice... the compilation slides early into a shadow corridor that the tech house of Amal Nemer or Vito Beto walks head down, kick drum steady. Fittingly, that is also where the strangest cut of the lot lives: Nezvil's 'The Passenger', 8:10 — the longest running time on the record — listed at 71 BPM, a half-time reading that makes it the densest passage of the journey.
Light comes in through the major keys
The landscape shifts at '7UP': from there to 'Tick Over', five consecutive major keys line up (A-flat, D, F, E, D), and the record opens up with them. This is where the funky house surfaces, and there is a lovely detail: all three cuts in the genre — 'We Can Win', 'Gimme Groovy' and 'A Place To Call Home' — sit in major keys. The funky warmth never once steps onto minor ground. That last one is signed by Block & Crown, an Amsterdam duo with disco roots and a past on Hed Kandi and Spinnin', alongside Sharapov: G major at 123 BPM, the friendliest point on the map.
The ending tips the scales back. C minor is the volume's gravitational center — four appearances — and Tom Bug's 'Anyway', 6:35 in that very key, switches off the light the major block had turned on. What remains is a clear drawing:
- An early, sustained descent into minor territory, with 'Gobbledygook' and 'Freestyle' at the bottom of the valley.
- A bright central plateau where major keys and funky house coincide.
- A return to C minor that closes the emotional circle.
For a label as prolific as Nothing But — one of Beatport's busiest compilation factories — a volume that draws such a legible tonal arc says more than any press release.
Sources: Beatport · Viberate
