Caribou: Swim (2LP) [MERGE]

Why you'll love it

This 2LP set is cut at 45 RPM for extra punch and comes in a gatefold sleeve with a download code. Swim was shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize, won the Juno for Electronic Album of the Year, and Resident Advisor named it the best album of 2010.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Cut at 45 RPM
• Gatefold jacket
• Download card included
• Poster included

About the album

Dan Snaith, a math PhD from Dundas, Ontario, described Swim as getting up every day and making "loads and loads and loads of music," then sifting through for the good bits. About 700 songs didn't make the cut. DJ nights at London's Plastic People had pulled him away from the psychedelic pop of Andorra and toward the club, and he wanted dance music that felt liquid rather than mechanical, built from loops and live instruments he could bend and stretch until they swam.

"Odessa" opens with a woozy, off-kilter groove and Snaith's soft falsetto, "Sun" builds an entire track out of one hypnotic word, and "Kaili" and "Leave House" ripple and bend as if recorded underwater. Snaith played and programmed nearly everything himself. "Jamelia" closes things with vocals from Luke Lalonde of Toronto's Born Ruffians.

"Odessa" ended up in FIFA 11 and in car commercials, and the album sold 175,000 copies worldwide by 2015. It's the rare dance record that rewards the armchair as much as the club, which is good news for those of us whose knees retired before we did.

Also at Kops: more Caribou on vinyl · browse Electronic

Tracklist

Listen

On Merge (cat# MRG348), the 2010 album.