Dan Snaith’s musical outlets have long been spaces for exploration, whether mixing unlikely yet complimentary productions on the dancefloor or merging songwriting styles into a glittery mesh. Since debuting Daphni in 2012, his releases have entered an alternating cycle, drifting every few years between Daphni’s club curiosities and Caribou’s pop adventuring. And as the pendulum swings back to Daphni in this grand scheme, Snaith’s latest album Butterfly finds the two sides of his manifold output converging for the first time.
‘Waiting So Long’ features none other than the man himself singing his signature heartfelt hooks over the high energy disco bounce of Daphni’s rhythms, glued together by sunshine sample flips and party atmosphere. Make no mistake, this is a Daphni album through and through (the flashes of heavy bass and occasional splashes of dub make that clear), but this meeting of aliases speaks to Snaith’s willingness to switch things up and play with the format. There’s an obvious comparison to be made with butterflies and metamorphosis, as Snaith is acutely aware of how club tracks can evolve and radically shift without ever losing the beat.
Indeed, playfulness prevails over the “functional” aspect of dancefloor tools. Quaint minor piano flourishes turn the rebounding drum machines and frothing strings of cymbals on ‘Sad Piano House’ into a rainy day rave, a total contrast to the full throated bass and crunchy funk of ‘Clap Your Hands’ which reaches a freezing intensity at its peak. From then on, anything is possible in the tracklist: ‘Two Maps’ scrubs wildly with an imperative and heartracing climb through contorted drums, beats like construction work stomp around the rolling ream of colourful hand drum traffic on ‘Miles Smiles’, jazz drums swish and bass steps hurriedly through the sharp cut piano blocks of ‘Caterpillar’. There’s even room for a jaunty harpsichord in the penultimate ‘Invention’.
Dan Snaith is never content to stay the same with his music, and Butterfly shows his Daphni moniker excitedly morphing his dancefloor sensibilities.
