26 June 2026
sim0ne broke through in 2023 when her remix of ‘Say Yes To Heaven’ captured the attention of Lana Del Rey and techno fans in equal measure. That track unsurprisingly distils her sound – the animated edge of dance music welded with bright and beautiful poptimism. We get more of this amalgam on her new EP zer0.
We start out with ‘lights down’, where the chorus is wonderfully evocative of 2000s girl bands. ‘in ya mind’ features a striking, glassy piano riff as the melodic core of the tune. Possibly sim0ne’s greatest strength is her ear for melody. She constructs lines in ways that you wouldn’t expect, avoiding the sickly sweetness of predictability each time by etching in hints of darkness to her phrases. Her melodies are cutting, addictive, and dripping with emotion.
Classic syncopated house chords serve as the foundation for ‘on my mind’. She introduces some breakbeats around halfway through for some textural contrast to the mechanistic four-to-the-floor grooves so central to trance and techno. ‘space cadet’ also firmly pulls from the dance music of the 1990s.
She manages to transduce the energy of those early rave days into this song – it is probably the most vivacious of the whole release. A lovely xylophone melody cuts through the harmony sharply and some wobbly bass sounds that enter later really bring on the bass face.
‘freaky’ offers the typical snapshot imagery of a hook-up on a night out set to a eurodance instrumental. ‘always believed in you’ brings more of the eurodance vibes that seem to be the latest trend in the ever-spinning wheel of fashionable nostalgia. But she explores this style without being derivative. The closer is the most direct reference to trance here.
The atmosphere of the instrumental is bolstered by lyrics that deal with unstable conclusiveness. The beauty in these words is their universality – they will resonate equally with someone who has just left a decade long relationship, but also with someone who is witnessing the dawn after having the greatest night out of their life.
sim0ne has her formula down to a tee. The energy of the techno continuum coupled with the big feelings of pop makes for a truly explosive experience bodily and cerebrally.
If this is how powerful she sounds on the record, I cannot begin to imagine what her live shows are like.
4/5
Words: Charlie Edmondson
Check out sim0ne’s new EP ‘zero’ below: