If you listen to enough dance music, you'll come to treasure concrete ideas. You know them when you hear them, because dance music at its most rote and workaday is often more about execution, about DJs having conversations with other DJs, about having enough material to fill a marathon set and yet another podcast. Dan Snaith has been dipping his toes in these waters. He plays long sets at clubs around Europe when his main vehicle, Caribou, isn't opening for Radiohead. He releases tough-to-snag 12"s of material he admittedly remixed solely for the purpose of DJing. Sometimes it takes a fresh set of eyes: The most invigorating thing about Jiaolong, a collection of dance tracks produced by Snaith under his Daphni alias, is that it's packed with ideas. It's the excitable product of an artist who could no longer watch a scene from the sidelines, who had to jump in before his brain, or his MPC's memory card, burst from abundance.
More than anything, it's this sense of abandon and exploration that keeps Jiaolong from sounding like the work of a dilettante. It's easy to draw parallels between Snaith's work and that of his longtime friend Four Tet-- who himself released a collection of dance tracks this year after a decade of varied, homebody psychedelia-- but Snaith's work, for better and worse, is looser and more varied, not as indebted to the flourishing UK bass scene both veterans became enamored with. Snaith chases steepled, peak-time anthems before diving into bustling, jazzy house, and fearless techno melancholia.
Jiaolong's first track, "Yes, I Know", shares space with the grimy edits of Theo Parrish and the all-smiles filter disco of Tiger & Woods, reminding us that the hoarse refrains of 1970s R&B and the corroded drum machines of the 1980s make great bedfellows. Snaith, though, isn't satisfied with a killer loop and an ass-shaking beat: As the track progresses, he papers it with peals of noisy synths and burly, strongman bass. It's busy but not excessive, from an artist used to having a lot of balls in the air on any given track.
Jiaolong is front-loaded. Snaith follows "Yes, I Know" with a remix of an absurdly rare African 7" (it couldn't be licensed; the musicians couldn't be found) and "Ye Ye", the pulsing, earworm techno banger that shared a side with Four Tet's "Pinnacles". After these three tracks you'll be convinced that you're watching security footage of a kid in a candy shop, reaching and grasping for anything he can get his hands on, everyone a little guilty and a little geeked. The remainder of Jiaolong, though, is far more scattered, as Snaith moves from frantic sequencer battlegrounds ("Springs", "Light") to chin-stroking beat science ("Ahora") and back again. The porous, call-and-response refrain of "Pairs" and the acid-soaked improvisations of "Jiao" come closest to matching the sheer giddiness of the opening tracks.
In the interview above, Snaith admitted that the Daphni project-- which purportedly includes still-unreleased material earmarked for Snaith's DJ appearances-- has freed him from the constraints of Caribou, which at this point is closer to a standard rock democracy. Caribou is a band used to juggling multiple melodic ideas, a band that has to place a premium on organization and concision. Daphni's less focused moments sound like Snaith taking a toy off the shelf, Slinky-style, bending and prodding it at his leisure. That image doesn't do justice to Snaith's best moments, though. The point is not Snaith's juvenilia, or inexperience; it is that Snaith's fascination shines, taking him places that po-faced peers are blind to.
