- New York's breakbeat hero makes a crossover album that perfectly balances pop melody and dance floor heft.
- Accessible, cutting-edge club music almost sounds like an oxymoron. How do you toe the line between amorphous deconstruction like Batu and more approachable house and techno like Maya Jane Coles? New York City's Beta Librae, real name Bailey Hoffman, has laid out an impressive blueprint for how to do just that with her new album. Coming on Anthony Naples and Jenny Slattery's Incienso label—an established home for crossover-ready dance music LPs—Daystar the right balance of cool and deadly, with a cohesive string of pop-infused breakbeat mind-melters.
Hoffman's work is defined by the vast amount of space she creates with sound effects, hollowed-out grooves and her distinct touch with reverb. Often leaning toward the atmospheric with her previous music, on Daystar she foregrounds bold rhythms that grab the ear more forcefully than before. The ambient dreamscapes she crafted on 2018's Sanguine Bond are now accompanied by heavier, more commanding grooves. On tracks like "Penny University" and "Megafauna," she moves with a new level of dance floor swagger. The former is a creepy 2-step track with perfectly sculpted sub-bass, while the latter is a deep, chugging tech house cut infused with bubbly acid and spine-tingling sounds.
There's no need for glitchy gimmicks on Daystar—the excitement comes from hearing metamorphic tracks like "Mammoth Melting Sugar" evolve over time. In this instance, it introduces itself as a skeletal downtempo number that deceptively meanders around for the first couple of minutes before truly taking off with an intense gallop. With "Weavers," the broken drum pattern is already more high-energy than what we're used to hearing from Hoffman, but once the unexpectedly massive, three-note bassline comes in, it would fit right in at a foggy, decibel-pushing warehouse rave.
These big moments are woven between tracks of gentle-handed psychedelia. "Late At Night," a collaboration with vocalist and producer James K, is a surprisingly catchy clash of sounds, mixing dubby techno with ghostly sad-girl pop. The combination of wispy croons and slow, rigid breaks feels like a breakthrough for both artists, opening up a window to a parallel universe where artists like Skee Mask and Soccer Mommy might work together. Hoffman keeps the energy of the album in a calm state of flux with tracks like this, along with the woozy "Tea Too" and the final, afterglow-inducing "Bodhicitta."
Hoffman labeled her first Beta Librae SoundCloud uploads in 2014 as "experimental." Since then, she's insisted on going against the grain (an inherently risky move, especially given that she's released almost exclusively LPs rather than 12-inches). This practice has honed her skills at creating slow-burning, cohesive bodies of work rather than sharing scattered, one-off tracks. On Daystar, she's connected the dots better than ever before, lighting a path through the often daunting realm of leftfield electronic music.
Between the general disregard for genres, the smooth sounds of the production and an oscillating energy flow, Daystar serves as the tip of a blade tracing the border of dance music experimentation. For those that don't like to go all the way down the rabbit hole but still like to get their feet wet, this is for you.
Tracklist01. Penny Universities
02. Late At Night w/ James K
03. Megafauna
04. The Dance Class
05. Mammoth Melting Sugar
06. Weavers
07. Tea Too
08. Bodhicitta