Daphni – Jiaolong

Dan Snaith’s Daphni project functions, for him, as a kind of antithesis to his more well-known Caribou alter ego; as he explains, the creative process behind these pieces is intuitive, “rough and spontaneous”, capturing some of the “manic energy” that drives the clubbing scene. Jiaolong consequently sounds, at times, like a sketchpad for the more intricately realised Caribou work: the familiar, bass-driven chord washes and layered, organic percussion remain, but there is little sense of development as the LP progresses.  
 
That deliberate disengagement from the constraints of a meticulous, album-oriented approach, however, enables Snaith to bring out a hedonistic immediacy rarely evident in Caribou. There’s a thrillingly intense, acid-tinged futurism about tracks like Ye Ye, for example, which emerges precisely because of their single-minded, dancefloor-driven mentality. Coupled with Snaith’s intuitive ear for melody and rhythmic complexity, this sense of spontaneity ensures that Jiaolong is a more rewarding listen than its process of composition might imply.