dj danifox: ansiedade

DJ Danifox of Tia Maria Produções delivers the deadliest Príncipe since that incred last Nídia album with a highly developed take on humid, slow club and soul music that’s practically dripping with sweat. Essential late night gear of the highest order, tipped if yr into Theo Parrish x Nídia! ‘Ansiedade’ is another one of those perfect deployments from Príncipe, full of Afro-diasporic, rhythmic psychedelic energies spliced with electronic echoes of Portuguese fado’s melancholic blooz. Active since 2014 in Tia Maria Produçuões’s rotating assembly, Danifox really came into his own with 2020’s ‘Dia Não Mata Dia’, and here builds on that EP’s dare-to-differ club purview with a compellingly deep, eyes-down appeal. The 10 tracks drift in a seductively groggy but up-for-it style between takes on breezy batida and sultry tarraxho, each subtly embellished with organic instrumental flair and atmospheres that naturally evoke the alternating pressure systems of his Atlantic coast home, and quite brilliantly also featuring Danifox’s vocal on a few choice cuts. Whether implied by the sound design and minor key chords of ‘Ilha dos Bruxos’ or the nagging downstroke of ‘Tarraxho 001’, or more literally in the title of ‘Robert Johnson’, a timeless conception of the blooz beautifully guides proceedings toward the night throughout ‘Ansiedade’. It’s all brilliantly out-of-step with prevailing club currents, preferring a more classic but screwed embrace of dancefloor romanticism and expressionism that still has huge appeal to modern dancers of all stripes; variously coming off like Lisbon’s answer to Theo Parrish on the effortlessly brilliant sway of ‘Parça’ and with the elegiac blues-soul vocals in ‘Chopper’, while the likes of his drill-adjacent trills on ’Ngapa’ and down slow turns on the wickedly word ‘Aleijada’ and earthy trample of ‘Mar Vista’ are completely out there on their own. TIP!