2010 is the year when Dan Snaith’s project has seen its profile rise several notches in the UK. This is partly due to a live show that has come on in leaps and bounds, the recent gig at Manchester’s Warehouse Project finding “every track received with either closed eyes and euphoric faces”.
The main reason, though, is Swim, one of the year’s finest electronic albums that just keeps on giving. Two tracks from the album burned themselves indelibly into the British summer, one being the twisted funk of Odessa, the other being the hypnotic mantra that is Sun (sun…sun…sun…sun).
This solar whirlpool, with its Mr Scruff-type beat, may have become Caribou’s anthem, but if anything it stands a short head below the beguiling Bowls, where Tibetan bowls and harp create a wonderfully sonorous, treble rich texture, layered on top of an impenetrable, slowly shifting bassline.
Described on its release as “infused with a rhythm, a groove and a watery loveliness all of its own”, Swim is an album whose warm climate has left many a listener with a virtual suntan.
What we said: “For a dance music album, Swim sounds not only refreshingly organic, but also remarkably downbeat. Most remarkable of all, perhaps, is the way that Caribou have succeeded in marrying up these two things and still managed to make an album that is infused with a rhythm, a groove and a watery loveliness all of its own.”
Caribou MP3s or CDs
Caribou on Spotify
