reviews / 2026

DAPHNI - Butterfly

Name: DAPHNI – Butterfly
Item: Butterfly
Rating: 5
Author: Alessandro Giustiniano

2026 (Jiaolong)

house

by Alessandro Giustiniano

Coming off the success of “Cherry“, Dan Snaith returns under the moniker Daphni, his dancefloor-facing alter ego, far removed from the surreal density of “Andorra“. At its core is a driving, almost garage-inflected house sound, built on shifting melodies, luminous arpeggios and vocal samples manipulated into sharp, shrieking hooks. It's a less calibrated, more instinctive and playful approach compared to the project that made him famous. Where the previous Daphni record clearly showed the creative spark holding the whole thing together, on “Butterfly” doubts emerge about whether the method really still works.

The idea remains the same: letting the tracks develop naturally, as if every sound were the spontaneous consequence of the one before it. Here, though, the formula shows several cracks. It feels more like a studio diary than a finished work: the musings of an artist indulging in the luxury of not editing himself down. It moves from nu-disco episodes that wear thin with their repetitions to elastic French house bursts, which end up carrying much of the record. Between showy drops and high-speed Uk bass accelerations, the listen lurches around like a carousel ride. Attention tends to wander, and a bit of trimming would probably have made the whole thing more cohesive.

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24/02/2026

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Alessandro Giustiniano, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition