JAY DAN I EL
I FAN DAFYD D
Deep house with extra friction
Four to the floor, right across the world
Credentials? Detroit DJ/producer Jay Daniel has a bucketload
of those. His mum is Naomi Daniel, who sang on some of Carl
Craig’s early Planet E tracks, and he has just overhauled Four
Tet’s ‘Aerial’ for the ‘Beautiful Rewind Remixes’ set. He has
released two EPs of his own over the last couple of years, the
most recent being the ‘Karmatic Equations’ 12-inch double
pack on Wild Oats (Kyle Hall’s ultra-hip Detroit imprint),
which featured five rugged and crunchy deep house cuts, all
suggesting he has a particular fondness for extra heft in the
bottom end. There’s no word on him releasing an album as yet,
but he’s launching his own label shortly, so further batches of
interesting tuneage are on their way.
House music comes in all shapes and sizes – and that now
includes Ifan Dafydd’s corking world house hybrid. The enigmatic
Welshman, who broke a year-long hiatus with his recent ‘Eclipse’
single on the excellent Push & Run label, counts Gilles Peterson
as a fan and you can hear why. With a jazz undertow and a
warm groove underfoot, Dafydd chucks Middle Eastern strings
into his somewhat leftfield floorfillers. One other thing we
should mention is that while the name James Blake is thrown
around like confetti in the electronic music world, with every
other artist supposedly sounding like the Mercury Prize winner,
how many can say he was their former flatmate? Dafydd is
working in a totally different musical zone, but some of Blake’s
magic has clearly rubbed off on his one-time roomie.
N E W BUI L D
Blissed-out Hot Chip side project
WHO THEY?
Al Doyle and Felix Martin of Hot Chip fame needed an outlet for
the surfeit of songs they were creating in their day job. Et voila,
New Build.
WHY NEW BUILD?
Their second album, ‘Pour It On’, cropped up on Sunday Best
last October to across-the-board gushing – and no wonder.
Shrugging off the 80s sheen of their 2012 debut, ‘Yesterday
Was Lived And Lost’, it’s a delightful slab of bright and breezy
mellowness that fingers the hem of both Chicago and Detroit.
As sleek as panthers, as warm as duvets.
TELL US MORE
‘Pour It On’ was produced by Mark Ralph who, as those paying
attention will know, is the co-owner of Conny Plank’s original
customised 56-channel MCI desk, which has pride of place in
Ralph’s West London studio. Hot Chip have already made full
use of the desk and channelling the ghosts of Kraftwerk et
al is clearly no bad thing – as New Build prove. Side projects
often get badly overshadowed by the main attractions, but New
Build’s two long-players to date have already bucked that trend
and the signs are that Al and Felix will be stepping into some
limelight of their own this year.