Jiaolong

iTunes Editors’ Notes

Don’t be surprised by Dan Snaith’s recent detours into dance music. It’s where his heart’s been for years, from the parties he once threw with his old buddies The Junior Boys to the liquefied loops and locked grooves that made Caribou’s last album (Swim) such an electrified listen. Now working under the new alias Daphni—which was introduced in a sidelong Cortney Tidwell edit—Snaith has made it his mission to be on the same mind-expanding wavelength as underground heroes like Theo Parrish. Jiaolong isn’t a series of secondhand samples, however. If you didn’t know who was behind its elusive beats, it could pass as the hotshot productions of someone who hasn’t figured out his or her sound just yet. Some of that has to do with the album's track listing, which is split between previously released singles (the dementia-inducing corridors of “Ye Ye,” the hands-in-the-air house of “Yes, I Know”) and LP-only exclusives (the vaporized videogames of “Light,” the steam-spraying synth suites of “Long”). And some of it simply has to do with Snaith’s experience as a DJ. In many ways, Jiaolong feels like a carefully curated record crate, just with the same guy’s name plastered across all the labels.