Jiaolong
This collection of dance tracks produced by Caribou's Dan Snaith under his Daphni alias is the excitable product of an artist who could no longer watch a scene from the sidelines. A sense of abandon and exploration keeps Jiaolong from sounding like the work of a dilettante.
A record made with the dancefloor in mind, Dan Snaith's Caribou sideproject, Daphni, is a case of managing expectations and creating content more than anything else.
Daphni, the more dance-oriented project of Caribou's Dan Snaith, is bold and direct where his main project is intricate and subtle.
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.