- Caribou's Dan Snaith keeps the curveballs coming via his Jiaolong label, launched late last year. First, under his clubbier Daphni alias, Snaith offered two punchy modular freakouts and a cosmically-inclined edit of a 1973 Afrobeat tune; then, remixing Cleveland's Emeralds, he gave the pyschedelic synth voyagers their first real entry to the dance floor. Jiaolong's last release found Junior Boys' Jeremy Greenspan stretching his legs with analog techno; now, Toro Y Moi's Chaz Bundick returns to his Les Sins alias, last heard from in 2010, for two tracks of wobbly, left-of-center house.
Lush and glossy, "Fetch" sounds a little like Julio Bashmore's bassy brand of floor-filler. The cut-up R&B vocals, piano stabs and chest-massaging bass function as nostalgic triggers, but their visceral impact is no less immediate: there's a crystalline clarity to his finger snaps and DX7s that feels like a contact high from the cocaine sheen of their inspirations. But Bundick's version of this sound is more idiosyncratic, marked by off-kilter drum programming and a patched-together feel. Compared to "Fetch"'s ebullient baby baby baby routine, "Taken" is more circumspect. Here, Bundick indulges his melodic whims with a meandering brass synth solo atop a loping groove built from scraps of live drumming and breathy vocal samples.
Tracklist A Fetch
B Taken