Caribou
The music that is currently made under the name Caribou has been made under many other guises before. The first of these was Daniel V. Snaith, a real name for a real man born in 1979. He grew up in Ontario, Canada, and seemed to be heading for a career in mathematics from an early age - he studied the subject at the university of Toronto and both his father and sister are lecturers on the topic right here in our native England, where Dan himself now lives.
As you might know, the project now referred to as Caribou was once christened Manitoba. Dan managed to released ten or so records, starting with the ‘People Eating Fruit’ EP up to the ‘Up In Flames’ album, under the name before someone calling himself ‘Richard ‘Handsome Dick’ Manitoba’ claimed that he’d been using the name to DJ and play music under since the 1970s. Handsome Dick seemed to forget that Manitoba is actually, duh, like, a place name, and therefore pretty difficult to assign any kind of ownership or copyrights to, but courts agreed with him, and Dan subsequently chose to be known as Caribou from 2003 onwards after, reportedly, the name dawned on him during an LSD trip in the Canadian countryside..
Whilst releasing all that great music, Dan also completed a Ph.D in – you guessed it – mathematics at Imperial College in London, where he now lives. The city, not the college, that is. The music he makes? Massively inventive, futuristically melodic stuff that embraces new ways of turning sounds that are peculiar in to those that can sooth storms.
CARIBOU.FM: As you might expect from someone with a Ph.D in mathematics, Dan Snaith is quite up with new fangled technology, and doesn’t mind telling you – his MySpace and Flickr accounts all have pride of place on his official website, alongside a charmingly personal news feed.
MYSPACE.COM/CARIBOUMANITOBA: Just in case you’re not so keen on the new name, Dan’s MySpace address allows you to reminisce about the old one, whilst you stream four tracks from ‘Andorra’ in a semi-blissful state of musical contentment.
MELODY DAY: Chris O’ Toole lovingly assesses what is “intrinsically a pop track, filled with exuberant, optimistic motifs, but lacking the mundane triviality that passes for pop in the charts…”
ANDORRA: Caribou’s current concern is this, their / his finest album to date. “Rather than coming off as contrived or shallow, Snaith’s latest musical rebirth is just possibly his most brilliant”, muses Matt Reed.
MELODY DAY:
YETI:
SKUNKS:
ANDORRA: MINI-DOC