Hekt – Forever
Copenhagen cool mingled with ecstatic EDM seems like an unlikely union, but it's one that Hekt delivers with serious oomph on new album Forever
If 2026 is the year of the yearn, then Hekt’s debut album for Glasgow label Numbers is the soundtrack to longing in the club. Forever flits from excitable hyperpop, to thumping club-fillers, to moments of polished 2010s EDM (with all the soaring emotions left intact). A carousel of artists from the Scandi school of cool-girl dreampop join, including Fine, Valeria Litvakov and both members of Smerz. On Someday, Litvakov breathily delivers the refrain 'Someday you’re going to love me / Someday you’re going to hug me', encapsulating the lovesick introspection at the album’s heart.
The 13 tracks build up and beat drop across a spectrum of electronic genre; from 303 squelches in the acid house-infused Beautiful, to the heady inclusion of growling dubstep in But I Can’t Really Show You. Despite the album’s numerous synth-heavy pop tracks, Forever still feels most fun when delivering something less expected; take Big Things with its choppy, two-step beat, layered with Hekt’s back catalogue of glitchy and shimmering sounds. Or Anytime Anywhere, which flips Smerz's whisper of the word ‘eternity’ on the title track, distorting it to an androgynous, gremlin-like extreme, complemented with a tinkling metallic melody and a bassline crushed into oblivion.
Listen to: Someday (feat. Valeria Litvakov), Baby, Big Things