The 33-year-old Danish singer, songwriter, and producer built a cult following with her 2019 debut album, she’s performed at some of the biggest festivals in the world, and written for pop stars. But as this album’s title confirms, she’s the same old Erika de Casier, Still.

It’s 2am, you’re in a part of town you never knew existed, what lights do light your path are purple, blue, red, and the beat that sounded muddled as you walked through the alley to get to that cryptic, secret door all of a sudden sounds crystal clear, loud, low, and slow when you open it.

This is the experience of entering what will turn out to be one of the best nights of your life, and it’s how we enter Erika de Casier’s casually swag, sweaty, and sexy new record, Still.

This record drips with moonlight.

I get a little excited when ’90s drum n bass and R&B influences start to creep back into pop. I haven’t taken the time to get acquainted with some of the newest sub-genres of electronic pop but something tells me I should be calling this “hyperpop,” or some variant of it, but with synthetic harps, Jermaine Dupri-inspired “uhs” and “ahs,” and sped-up drum samples all vying for your sensitive little heartstrings, who cares what you call it?

It’s called “yes, please.”

The club can be an intense environment to enter. Nights designed for fun don’t always end up that way. But Erika de Casier’s music reimagines the dance floor as a place of solace away from the world, a place where you and three friends can bliss out forever, under the lights and bathed in the bass, a private nook of joy to crawl into when your boss is on your ass all week.

It’s how we all felt when Orbital’s “Halcyon On and On” came out. Remember the endless plane? The global oneness? The melting boundaries between skin, and the epic flickering of fireworks in slow-motion rippling across ocean waves? Yeah? Fuck yeah.

Dance music in general strives to imagine and actualize those worlds, worlds outside of this world. With TikTok however, the power of the imaginary romance dream of the dance floor has lately faded a bit behind the allure of the cold hard reality pill in the other hand. Dance is a powerful expression of personality though, and no matter what it connects us, it connects to our human us.

I love the idea of dance as a “reaching out” to the world, a way to bridge the gaps we’ve found between us in this epidemic of isolation. I love that even on a tiny screen, someone dancing can bring us joy and communicate meaning when languages don’t match. After Covid, I think we’re all a little burnt by not having the option to attend large dance gatherings and festivals, and many of us are just never going to go back.

What I love about de Casier’s highly emotive, patient dance music is that, in a way it reclaims dance music as an escape, a personal place to make meaning. Like, “okay, connection is great, but can I just have this moment for myself too?”

Can “liquidity” be an adjective we adopt to talk about dance music?

If music was a cocktail (spoiler alert: it is), we’d have to address the skill involved with finding the right balance of ingredients. Bitters, textures, sweetness and acidity, the temperature. Combining ingredients is an artistic act in service of both developing something new, total, refreshing, as well as accentuating or elevating all those individual flavours.

De Casier’s production blends instrumental tracks and samples, the synthetic and the literal, all beneath layers of voice that feel like clouds raining moisture down on everything. There’s a familiarity to each and every sample she triggers — sound design and percussion that feels plucked right off the vine of an Aaliyah or Toni Braxton beat from 25 years ago — yet the sum of these parts is something entirely new.

It’s liquid because it flows. It’s liquid because everything in it flows. It’s liquid because it sips down just as smooth on the dance floor as it does on your carpet floor with your headphones split between you and your boo.

Let’s make “liquidity” a thing so we can compare whatever we want to this record, because this Still is sparkling.

In “The Princess,” de Casier asks why everything needs to be a compromise. “I wanna do it hard and I wanna make love, make my own money… I wanna be a mom and still do my job, why can’t I have it all?”

I think in a way, she’s attempted to answer those questions by world-building a perfect little slow jam bubble of consonant electronica of her own making where she can have it all. The instruments and the samples, the footwork and the chilling out, the romance and the hard stuff.

Somewhere over a distant rainbow, Erika de Casier’s promise land is blossoming with sunflowers, and PinkPantheress, beabadoobee, and SZA are all rolling around in them.

She twirled her magic wand, closed her eyes, and manifested an incredibly accurate replica of that imaginary world on this record.

Listen and purchase here, please.