Caribou

The phrase ‘home studio’ can sometimes sound a little derogatory, implying a certain amateurishness about the space in which a musician creates their music. For Canadian-born, London-based musician Dan Snaith, however, the ability to place his music-making at the heart of his home and family life is a core part of his creative output.

Snaith first discovered his love of production while growing up in a small town outside Toronto, but it was after settling in the UK in the early 2000s that his musical output really took shape. Over the years, the city’s electronic music culture has slowly become an integral part of the Caribou sound. While early releases – first under the name Manitoba, then as Caribou – blended electronic sampling with influences from progressive and psychedelic rock, it was breakthrough record Swim in 2010 that saw Snaith nail his own distinctive sound, underpinning those ‘band’ elements with a throbbing club pulse. In recent years, Snaith has delved further still into the world of dance music with extended DJ sets and a second, club-focused alias Daphni – resulting in two full length albums and an excellent FabricLive release.

In 2020, he returns with Suddenly, his first Caribou album since 2014’s Our Love. It’s a record that combines a myriad of influences, blending modular synths with soul loops, shredding guitar parts and pop radio vocal edits. As with previous albums, the sound of Suddenly is deeply influenced by Snaith’s circle of family and friends, with his wife acting as a constant sounding-board and the likes of Four Tet, Floating Points and James Holden providing gear loans, inspiration and arrangement advice. We met up with Snaith in his North London home – complete with basement studio – to find out how it came together.

In terms of its production, how did Suddenly differ from previous Caribou albums?

“I guess on a macroscopic level I always have the same process which is, I’m down there [in the studio] writing every day. I really enjoy the first step, which is like generating an idea from nothing. I’ll make two or three 30-second long loops and they just accumulate – every day I make a couple of ideas and then they pile up, and I kind of sieve through them to find the ones that turn into tracks. On that level it’s getting worse and worse each time. I can show you that there’s over 900 sketches this time. It’s getting so stupid. I never really understood the people who can just make ten tracks…”

You can’t imagine just making a handful of tracks start-to-finish?

“It requires some kind of crazy foresight and also, I just figure, if I make another track and choose the best of those two, the result is going to be better than if I had