Most of the tracks barely exceed three minutes, and some are positively skeletal: “Crimson,” a ping-arpeggio laid out over a strange suggestion of white hats, sounds like a sun-bleached club anthem until only they're left the faintest streaks of color. “Falling” rips off a four-bar piece of 80s soul, a bit like one of Oneohtrix Point Never's Blocks Chuck Person, but a rolling sweep filter wraps hidden harmonics out of the sample. Starting high and wheezing, it sinks into deep chest-massaging sub-bass. Every time the sample loops, the kick drum is felt exactly once, and it's hard to overstate how satisfying it is when it hits home. Even in the simplest songs, CherryIts sound design is uniformly stunning, with worlds of detail lurking in the shadows of every hand-crafted crack and articulated growl.
The mood is overwhelmingly optimistic. bar for bar, this may be the most fun will be on a dance record this year. “Mania” turns Todd Edwards-style vocal tracks and a fidget-house beat, of all things, into beautiful dub techno. “Cloudy” drizzle on jazz piano like maple syrup, reminiscent of quicksilver Rhodes soloing Daft Punk's 'Disco Cubizm' remix. “Take Two,” a highlight, is a thunderous filter-disco anthem fueled by bent notes and propelled by hip-hop crowd chants of “Go! Go! Go!”—an unexpected sweet note that turns the mood from euphoric to utter giddiness. The lush keys and dandelion vocal loops of opener “Arrow” would have made for a great, if unsurprising, downtempo ballad. Instead, Snaith chooses to push the BPMs and string the beat with hi-hat trash. Cherry it's often as sweet as anything Snaith has recorded under any moniker, but it's clear that for now, energy is front of mind. Unlike club music meant for DJ mixing, whose patient ins and outs tend to prompt home listeners to grab the skip button, these bite-sized tracks always leave you wanting more.
A lot of electronic music, even when it's made for dancing, is complex, byzantine, tied up in heady concepts. Cherry it is none of those things. A tour de force of dancefloor intuition and emotional release, it has no point to prove. Pleasure is the main, perhaps the only, concern. The music is incredibly simple but also secretly and refreshingly adventurous. Listening to carefully crafted songs Suddenly, I wished Snaith had given his experimental instincts more free rein. On Cherrycuts loose.
from our partners at https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/daphni-cherry/
