DDWY Vinyl & CDs

Review: Welsh duo ddwy — Naomi and Ronan — continue their slow-burn rise with a luminous four-tracker that fuses ambient shimmer with dubwise propulsion. ‘Beaming Backwards’ opens on a melodic tip, weaving arpeggiated pads around a restrained but propulsive groove. ‘Stars Stars’ leans hazier, its synth textures and soft-focus rhythms blurring the line between dream pop and deep house. On the B-side, ‘Peak Smile’ introduces low-slung bass and echo chamber FX, pushing their sound into more dubbed-out territory. Final track ‘Heuldro’r Haf’ (Welsh for “summer solstice”) floats in beatless form — misty, delicate, and grounded by a sense of melancholic stasis. Having previously appeared on Munich’s Public Possession, ddwy now offer their most balanced and evocative work to date, signalling a quietly assured presence in the continuum of melodic, leftfield UK electronica.

Review: London duo DDWY, consisting of first-names-only Naomi and Ronan, return to Public Possession with the hypnotic prog-zoneout dance haul, 'Spinning Stones'. An impressionistic super hat trick of soft-edged progressive house and downtempo, DDWY's implied aim is to fetter the listener as thrall, by way of mystic vocals, washout pads and weighty but firmly planted, orthopsychic kick-pulses-of-life. Described hilariously by the label as "perfect for Balearic DJs" but equally likely to be "played out in sleazy dark basements or pubs in the British countryside", the suggestion is that it doesn't matter where you are, it's what you're listening to, what you're gripped by, that counts. By far, the cake-taker here is 'Theme Of The PCCP', which, judging by the name, imagines the ploddingly blissed-out soundtrack to the outer workings of an alt-timeline, psychonautically angel dusted Chinese Communist Party.

Review: DDWY appeared on Public Possession label earlier in the year when they put out their Chill Pill compilation and their contribution was the perfectly balearic dance gem 'Orchard'. Now the pair is back with a limited edition album, Sprig Songs. It lays out their distinctive take on dance music which is dubbed out and trippy, often slow paced, doused in proggy melodies and all flavoured with unique Nangis chants. The spell binding selection includes the warped rhythms and FX of 'Green Villa' and otherworldly depths of 'Do Deers Dream?' while 'Hair Spiders' is a more dancefloor ready and dubbed out beatdown.