About a year ago, Caribou mastermind Dan Snaith couldnt swim. On a good day, he might get a decent doggy paddle going but, really, he could barely stay afloat. All that changed when his wife got him swimming lessons for Christmas. Then I became completely obsessed with it and now I swim constantly, he says. The only times I really left the house in the past year were either to go out to a club late at night or, in the middle of making music during the day, Id go to swim every day. It was important to get some distance, and ideas would percolate around in my head as I was swimming away. So it seemed like a theme that was appropriate.

With its absorption of club culture sounds weaved within subtle pop frameworks, Swim is Caribous masterpiecethe record hes wanted to bring to fruition for as long as hes been making music. A Canadian from small-town Ontario now based in England, Snaith has been a leading figure in electronic music over the past decade. A mathematics scholar and an ingenious multi-instrumentalist/composer, he surprised critics and fans with 2007s Andorra, a brilliant, electro-tinged pop breakthrough with a timeless grace that made most year-end Best of lists and won Canadas prestigious Polaris Music Prize. After the startling infectiousness of Andorra, Swim is a more complex, multi-layered affairripe with fascinating rhythms, instrumentation, and vocals (including those of Born Ruffians Luke Lalonde, who appears on Jamelia)that becomes more alluring with each listen. And its got Caribou floating.

The real substance of the sound of the record for me is this idea of making dance music that consists of liquid elements, Snaith explains. Rather than sounding metallic and rigid, everything is washing around you while youre listening to itfrom one ear to another but also the pitch is oscillating up and down, and each instrument is going in and out of tune with everything else. Sounds are emerging and disappearing, like everything is made out of water. Dance music is very much associated with very crisp, metallic, clean sounds. I like this idea of dance music that just washes around with fluidity. I feel like its the most me album that Ive made, Snaith continues. In the past, oftentimes part of the excitement of making music for me was hearing someone elses musicsome long-forgotten record from the pastand deciphering how to make those sounds and incorporate those ideas into something of my own. This record is much less a product of its influences. I think this is the record that Im most proud of because its the most me in the way things sound; I feel like I have my own vocabulary now. So much of contemporary music is soaked in referencing this or that. I wanted people to put the record on and not be able to say, This sounds like so- and- so. I want people to say, This sounds like Dan! Its what everybody wantsto have their fingerprint on the music theyre making. I feel like Ive achieved that to a greater extent than I have in the past, and thats exciting.

caribou.fm
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People Eating Fruit single - Leaf 2004
Paul's Birthday single - Leaf 2001
Start Breaking My Heart CD/LP - Leaf 2001
Give'r single - Leaf 2001
If Assholes Could Fly This Would be an Airport single - Leaf 2003
Jacknuggeted single - Leaf 2003
Up in Flames CD/LP - Leaf 2003
Hendrix with KO single - Leaf 2003
Special Edition EP CD single - Leaf 2003
Up in Flames Special Edition double CD - Leaf 2003
Barnowl 12" single - Leaf 2005
Yeti 12" single/CD single - Leaf 2005
Tour CD CD - 2005
The Milk of Human Kindness CD/LP - Leaf 2005
Marino. The Videos DVD/Video - Leaf 2005
Andorra CD/LP - Merge Records 2007
Swim CD/DBL-LP - Merge Records 2010