Under Review

D. Tiffany

D. Tiffany (1080p)

review by Jonathan Kew

The cover art on 1080p’s s/t release, D. Tiffany, is congruent with the label’s inclining reputation for postmodernism. Its late ‘80s colour palette has shades of peach suspended above a sea of screensaver water. There’s a dystopian ease in the image’s soft hyper-realism: a subsumed Crucifixion is affixed to the foot of a bridge, foreshadowing the gilded sand on the horizon. The overall impression is sedate, save perhaps the Terminator glare on the bridge pillars and the sharp knives that are the boat-sails.

For myself, a total neophyte with any genre of electronic, it’s easiest to comment on the superficial. The cover art is an apt outside for what’s inside. The immediately evocative quality of D. Tiffany’s music is its lo-fi production. Her music grants warmth to grooves and takes the edge off of percussive rasps. It has a raw and consciously unrefined texture. D. Tiffany is not the type of album that attacks or commands. Its tone lures you into a collage of fuzzy nostalgia.


Though consciously indefinite, the experience on D. Tiffany is engaging rather than antagonistic. The industrial clattering on “Chains” doesn’t submerge the innervating groove. Penultimate track “Fade Groove”—with sinister synth warps—manages to sound urgent while building at a casual progression. Closing track “I Want To” ends the album on a dark note. It has a low jutting bassline, a repressed and submissive percussion, and a distressed intermittent warble. If the album is a hypnagogic traipse through deceptive luxury, then D. Tiffany ends logically: perturbing.


The less foreboding tracks corroborate D. Tiffany’s penchant for curious techno progressions. “Tranq moon” employs alluring chopped voices and layers of complementary melody, while “Tiffany Sway” has a cheeky bass-pop swagger and “Ccoco” carries catwalk claps and clicks. There’s a confidence in the unhurried—though never unoccupied—tracks. No mad tangents or staggering crescendos, just steady accretion and the patient play of palpable textures. This compulsive building lulls you into the album. D. Tiffany is a waking dream of compliance and comfort, with uncanny elements just beyond the mind’s eye.