In the five years since DJ Sabrina released her landmark debut Makin’ Magick, her prolific output of nostalgia-tinged dancefloor tracks has captured the hearts of millennials and zoomers everywhere. There’s just something inexplicably magical about DJ Sabrina albums that meld 90s rave nostalgia with TV sitcom samples and snazzy synths. Though Destiny follows the exact same formula set out by its predecessors (a behemoth runtime and a melancholy for a bygone era), it somehow manages to blur those elements into something new. Clocking in at nearly four hours spread over 41 tracks, Destiny is the biggest DJ Sabrina project yet and against all odds, it doesn’t ever feel like it’s being backed into a corner by its repetition. On the contrary, as the album goes on, the momentum it builds only gets stronger.
Drawing from the same plunderphonics approach to house music that her previous works did, Destiny never remains stationary for long. Ramping up the grooves with disco, synthpop, and vocoder samples, the album feels like a party that never ends. With alluring chord progressions and subtle embellishments, the songs gradually cascade into a swirl of surrealism. As always, DJ Sabrina’s albums work best as the background to something else where you can drop in and out of the playlist with ease. The album’s sequencing is strong enough to be played continuously or broken into sections without losing any of its energy. Though the rhythm and synths form a melodic foundation, it’s DJ Sabrina’s hyperfixation on vocal samples that propel the emotional aspect of her music to something greater. As they get passed through a vocoder and drift into the pulse of each song, there’s an intimately recognizable quality to them. The nostalgia that DJ Sabrina goes for is almost inexplicable, a call back to old 2000s TV conversations of heartbreak and unforgettable nights that never seem to end. On “Stay”, the subtle, distant call of “Stay until the morning” reverberates in your mind as much as the distant voices of yearning on “Will U Be Mine”. Though it’s not always easy to discern what exactly the fuzzy voices are talking about, the ambient feeling of nights long lost digs deep into your soul.
In the end, that’s what makes DJ Sabrina so compelling for me. There’s always a hint of melancholy, an undertone of sadness tinged into the upbeat dance tracks. It reminds you of big moments like anxious first love or lost heartache but also the small ones of nighttime joyrides and cheesy romcoms you watched in 2007. In the four hours of Destiny, there’s not a hint of cynicism or irony in its DNA. It wears its heart on its sleeve and never shies away from genuine human emotion. Could it have diversified its sounds instead of following in the footsteps of Charmed? Probably. Could the tracks have been shortened with little effect? Most likely. But what makes Destiny great is this exact refusal to adhere to those expectations of what albums should be like. In an era where TikTok snippets reign supreme, it’s refreshing to hear an artist experiment the way they want to. The enchanting thing about Destiny isn’t so much the music itself but rather, the spellbinding emotions that it reminds you of.
Must Listens: For Now and Forever, Will U Be Mine, Actions Speak Louder
