Puppy

One of the more playful and texturally light entries in Netsky's catalog, "Puppy" uses its title's energy to animate its production — bounding, enthusiastic, slightly reckless in its forward motion, willing to prioritize joy over structural precision in ways his more considered productions never permit themselves. The breakbeat has an almost skippy quality, the samples bouncing rather than slamming, the overall mix carried by exuberant energy that makes a crowd reflexively smile before they've processed why. The bass is less prominent than usual, more integrated into the midrange texture of the arrangement, serving the overall lightness rather than asserting itself as the track's central voice. Melodically and emotionally the track suggests infatuation in its earliest, most unguarded stage — the feeling before you've consciously decided to feel it, when the emotion is moving faster than your self-protective instincts. Culturally it sits at the sunlit end of liquid DnB, music for outdoor stages and afternoon warmup sets rather than the contemplative interior spaces the debut album occupied with such intelligence. The scenario is uncomplicated positive energy: a good morning, a long run in decent weather, an afternoon when everything happens to be going well. It doesn't reach for profundity and doesn't need to — pure kinetic affection, fully accomplished at its own deliberately modest scale.