In the decade since Caribou’s Dan Snaith launched his Daphni alias with a flurry of DJ edits, it has evolved from a clearinghouse for club tools into an amorphous side project where the only constant is a focus on moving bodies. “Cherry” is the first new Daphni production in three years, and it’s by far the heaviest thing Snaith has released in that guise. Where classic disco and house have formed the foundation of many Daphni tracks—his last outing, 2019’s “Sizzlin’,” sped up a giddy horn riff from an obscure 1981 Bermudian funk record—“Cherry” tips its hat to the perennially futuristic sounds of Detroit techno.
The track is built around bright, glassy FM synths that chime like tiny bells, and across the track’s six-minute run, Snaith carefully teases the balance between chaos and control. The bell-tone riff moves in seasick syncopations, periodically tripping over the edges of the rhythmic grid; roughly halfway through, he brings the song to a full stop, indulging in a second-long fakeout of pure silence. Pity the poor DJ who isn’t yet familiar with the song’s twists and turns and, confronted with that heart-stopping moment of dead air, thinks that the song is over. For dancers, of course, that precarious moment will be simply thrilling, like the seas parting at 134 beats per minute. But for all that slipperiness, the rounded synth chords that occupy the track’s midrange are rich and reassuring, and the drums interlock like clockwork. Out of the collision of those opposing impulses emerges the track’s spirit: giddy and anarchic but also strangely determined. It’s a summer anthem with sunrise raving written all over it.
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