Rapid Fire Reviews: Hefty Dance Records with DJ Sabrina The Teenage DJ, Daphni & The Soft Pink Truth

These fit together better than the last trio did, even in the vast arena of alternative dance and electronica micro-genres. This trio of somewhat longwinded dance records all puzzled me at first and after many repeat listens I'm returning to try and digest them in this fashion. 

Bewitched! - DJ Sabrina The Teenage DJ

When Sabrina broke out with her indelibly charming and fittingly titled album Charmed in 2020 I gave it a positive review and promised to keep up with what Sabrina did next, but I didn't know just how daunting of a task that would turn out to be. She works hard and this nearly 90 minutes of music is FAR from the only evidence of that as she's released projects and singles routinely over the past two years. I couldn't cover all of them, but from watching the promotional cycle for Bewitched! it was clear that this was the most significant and impactful thing she's done since Charmed and I wanted to make sure I touched on it. That is by no means an excuse to skip some of the material she's put out in the meantime, much of which features many of the same qualities I've appreciated about her music in the past, just that I wanted to get some public thoughts out about this record before the year ended. 

Despite just 13 songs in the mix their various lengths ranging from 4 to 10 minutes means that this thing stretches out to nearly an hour and a half of material, but that certainly isn't anything new for Sabrina. The shimmering and nostalgic dance music packed full of samples from all kinds of various media is still in tact though I would argue that this time around there is less that's distinctly 90's about the nostalgia conveyed through the songs and more of a blurry and purposefully indiscernible fusion of eras. All of this is on display on the 8-minute opener Under Your Spell which features a wonderfully random selection of repeated samples and a really beautiful moment of layering the vocals that just makes for a really sweet bridge and makes the beat of the song feel all the sweeter when it rushes back in. There are also some songs like You Always Loved Me which take a more direct approach, using samples more in their entirety and serving as hooks that recur throughout the song. It's a shift that I appreciate that adds some valuable brevity to some of the more mesmerizing and long-winded dance songs. Something else that comes up a lot on the record is love, but it feels more like a style than a theme. The messaging in that regard can be pretty inconsistent, with moments that lean into a more lust-heavy sensual side of love and then samples about breakups and love not lasting forever on the very next song. As generic as that may seem typed out it really does help the record sell its irresistibly sparkly demeanor. Even though I would say there's a dip in quality in the second half there's really only one song that I outright dislike, that being The High Road whose squelching almost hyperpop-style synths are far too harsh for the shimmering vibes of the record and even of the song itself. Overall I liked this album quite a bit. Not only does it highlight the things that make Sabrina unique in the realm of electronic music, but it also adheres to some excellent fundamentals underneath it all. I can't promise I'll cover everything Sabrina does going forward, but this surely won't be the last time I talk about how much I enjoy her music. 7/10

Cherry - Daphni

Daphni is the house music side project of Dan Snaith who is also responsible for Caribou. Since I enjoyed the previous Caribou record quite a bit and the last time we heard from Daphni was on the tantalizing 2019 Sizzling EP, there was no reason for me not to be excited about this record. Well, a reason emerged. I wasn't crazy about the singles from the album, many of which played it pretty straight in terms of house music staples which I don't necessarily mind, they just didn't do much to set themselves apart from everything else out there. Tracks like Cherry, Clavicle, and Cloudy were certainly fun on first listen but none necessarily blew me away and the thought of diving into a 14-track record full of just okay house music didn't exactly entice me. One thing I can say the record doesn't do is play it as safe as I was expecting based on the singles. There are definitely some unique-sounding approaches to house and dance music to be found in the mix here, the issue is that more often than not the results aren't great. Early on in the record, there's a run of songs from Always There through Crimson and Arp Blocks where the tracks range from forgettable to outright annoying, without much of anything to redeem them in between. It doesn't carry on through all the deep cuts, as Mona is a big highlight with some irresistibly crunchy synth lines. I'm also pretty fond of the mesmerizing track Amber later on in the record. Unfortunately, this album is a pretty mixed bag of songs that really stick to the guns of house music and don't take on too much risk, and tracks that do make those big swings a few of which miss in ugly ways. The results are a difficult listen that it's hard to properly settle into, which for an album that tries this hard to make you dance, feels pretty crippling. 5.5/10

Is It Going To Get Any Deeper? - The Soft Pink Truth

I was pretty excited when The Soft Pink Truth dropped a new EP earlier this year, firstly because I liked the projects last record back in 2020 and secondly because I wasn't crazy about the Matmos record that came out earlier this year. Turns out I was getting my Drew Daniel fix in regardless because there was a whole album coming through. This record is exactly as much to work through as I anticipated and honestly kind of hoped it would be. The first track alone is a monster 11-minute opener that builds up layers of sounds like a Spiritualized song then transitions into a collection of brass instrumentation fused with electronics which finally shifts into an extended sort of pseudo-ambient outro. All of that is just the first track and it's not like this thing gets any easier to spell out from there. The following two tracks are two of the shortest on the record but they both feature lively, excellent instrumentation and great vocal performances. Wanna Know gives the album its title as the phrase is repeated and filtered through echoey and cavernous effects that go perfectly with the bouncy clanging instrumentation surrounding it. Another song that has the appearance of ambient is Moodswing but fittingly it has a change of pace. Like some Soft Pink Truth songs before this track and many others on the record exhibit an insane amount of patience across their runtime. These tracks develop slowly and let every change seep into the mix until it becomes beyond familiar before introducing anything else and I really admire that about it. The second half of the record also starts with a huge track, the 12-minute Sunwash which achieves this eerie and driving effect by pairing synthetic keyboard sounds with piano keys. It has a long opener and by the time the slithery whispering vocal samples show up I'm totally hooked. That eeriness follows the song through much of the remainder of the record with vocal samples that fade in and out of the song like ghosts and what I would even call a kind of musical jumpscare on the track Deeper Than This?. The only song on the record I really don't enjoy is the penultimate track Toot Sweet which does improve in its second half but sounds extremely hokey, half-baked, and out of place for much of its built-up. All things considered, I like this album quite a bit. It's refreshingly unique and creatively versatile throughout in a way that is continually rewarding with consecutive relistens. I don't pretend to understand every secret it has, but I do love listening to it. 8/10