Written by Noelle Alarcon House music is always a danceable delight; an air of familiarity is constantly present in the candy-colored soundscapes. It just invites your body to move and let the bouncing vibrations thud through your veins and lead you to the dance floor. A rapid attack on all your senses at once, the genre is a vessel for enthusiasm, accented by the occasional syncopated beats and punchy synths. Darla Biana’s debut passion project, ‘Iridescent,’ flickers between the realm of house and the adjacent classifications its wide panorama encompasses; described as the artist’s challenge to herself, created in just three months, it’s an ambitious, headfirst dive into the creativity a deck and a few beats can afford. There’s a template to the genre Biana pursues throughout the album, which makes her vision easy to audibly sketch out–like the minutiae pleasures of driving across cubed, 3D streets in video games from the early aughts or even the trance-inducing techno horns that are emitted from the complex insides of holographic CDs. ‘Iridescent’ is frank and straight to the point, with Biana’s invitations for romance coated in the relaxed lilt of her voice. The record doesn’t need a million ways, nor words, to express self-confidence and infatuation; Biana merely uses the music to punctuate what she means and to begin her sentences. In “Love You Down,” she says it like she means it–she will love you down. Plain and simple. The relaxed harmonies that follow the utterance of her promise and the four-on-the-floor beats are enough signs of the commitment she offers to the table. In accordance with commitment, it’s praiseworthy to note this album’s commitment to pushing Biana’s incredibly specific vibe. There are two interludes in its 33-minute runtime: “Make You Mine,” an appetizing opening that kicks off the album with hypnotizing vocals and pulsing D&B percussion, and “One Day,” a similar, 58-second break that signifies the transition of the album’s subject matter from falling in love to being in love with yourself. For a debut project, ‘Iridescent’ is like a designer’s first sketch that’s come to life–a piece that knows which elements to take from the avant-garde, and what its limitations can bring to life instead of restricting. However, there are instances when the production overpowers Biana’s vocal color, leaving her vocals floating, wandering across the track instead of becoming one with the music. There’s an admirable devotion to staying musically cohesive, yet it could have touched on the adjacent possibilities of exploring dance aside from sticking to similar beats. You can never go wrong with the glitzy, bouncy glamour of house–it just so happens that as versatile as the genre is, it’s also one that needs to embrace its malleability and constantly be kept up with. Darla Biana shows in her debut that she can–she just needs that extra boost, that liveliness brought upon by variety to continue. ‘Iridescent’ is house, definitely–but it’s a “house” that’s a little more lived in, a bunch of tracks to dance in your bedroom to. Support the art and the artist: