Apricity

Toronto beatmaker Harrison doesn’t so much make music for the club as soundtrack your hazy, soft-focus dream of the best night out ever. His second full-length, *Apricity*, revels in the space between the vivid and the surreal, drawing on the history of dance music to situate familiar sounds in alien contexts. The ethereal house instrumental “Wavestation” emerges from a pink neon fog, but the ’90s flashback is upended by a perky synth melody and a chopped-up vocal sample that gets twisted into a twitchy rhythmic hook. Even the tracks showcasing guest vocalists eschew linear logic: Motormouthed MC iaamSaam steers the trippy trap of “Midnight Snack” into a swooning R&B chorus, while the slinky disco-soul vibes on “Atmosphere” (with Daniela Andrade) get thrown off-balance by slow-motion synth arpeggios, ray-gun effects, and drum-machine ticks. As Andrade sings on the chorus, “It’s not always rational”—but it sure feels right.