(City Slang/Shock)

The wettest dance music you’ve heard since Liquid Liquid

For someone who has a PhD in advanced mathematics – a fact that, in certain circles, would see him condemned as an unfeeling “left-brain thinker” – Dan Snaith sure can be imaginative. Swim, his fifth record overall and the third under the Caribou moniker, is based around a simple enough conceit: what if he tried making dance music that sounded more fluid (like water) than rigid? Rather than the tepid concoction of aqueous ambience a lesser producer might create, Swim is not so much about liquidity as the interplay between liquidity and structure: in Sun, Snaith’s simple refrain (the word “sun” repeated) slides around on a bed of wobbly, dubsteppy synths, but the whole is kept coherent by a crisp treble beat. Similarly, in lead single and album opener Odessa a rubbery bassline snakes its way around a cowbell ripped straight from an Arthur Russell session, while piano stabs keep the track anchored in 4/4. Bowls is perhaps the album’s highlight, coming off as something in between Alice Coltrane’s seminal track Journey In Satchidananda and Four Tet’s meticulously-constructed electro-folk (unsurprisingly, Four Tet’s Kieren Hebden assisted on the decks with this album). Unfortunately, Snaith isn’t much of a vocalist, a fact he seems to be aware of – he often buries his voice deep in the mix, utilising it more as an instrument amongst others than a song’s focus. Otherwise, this is a superb collection of carefully-constructed, well-layered leftfield dance music – and one of 2010’s highlights.

****½

CHAD PARKHILL

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