Daphni

***Jiaolong (pronounced JOW-long), an album of shape-shifting work that sits easily with the kinetic likes of Theo Parrish and Floating Points, marks the first full length by DAN SNAITH (CARIBOU) as DAPHNI. Throughout his six-month global Radiohead support tour, Dan Snaith has fallen deeper in love with the dance floor. Snaith says, “DJs have the potential to blindside you. During the time I was making the Caribou album Swim, I’d fallen back in love with moments in small, dark clubs when a DJ puts on a piece of music that not only can you not identify, but that until you heard it you could not have conceived of existing. Electronic instruments are notoriously uncontrollable, unpredictable, and recalcitrant!” Snaith says ruefully. “I’ve been building a modular synthesizer, which plays a prominent role on this album. It growls or screams when I don’t expect it to. Nudging one dial changes the sound so drastically that I’ll never get the original sound back. It’s like improvising with another musician, and its voice is all over this music. I’ve been surprised by the number of transcendent moments I, sober and in my mid-30s, have had in clubs in the last few years,” Dan says. “There’s some magic in it still. The clichés about the collective consciousness of clubs still seems to hold water in some special cases. There is a small world where dance music lives up to its potential to liberate, surprise, and innovate. It’s there that I hope Daphni has a place.” Jiaolong is sure to be seen as one of the best records of 2012, both in the dance community and beyond. (STREET DATE - 10/16/2012)