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When Dan Snaith’s debut EP as Manitoba was released in October 2000, no-one -least of all him – expected the overwhelming response the record received. The People Eating Fruit 12″ was limited to a thousand copies all of which sold out almost immediately. An unprepossessing twenty-two year old Toronto resident with classical and jazz piano training, Dan happens to be a masters-qualified pure mathematician in the daylight hours. After dark, he’s an electronic music producer. If this sounds terrifying, fear not. The only thing rigorously serious about Dan is his arch sense of humor that owes more to a helpless addiction to silly hip hop records than bamboozling all and sundry with abstract theorems. Although, if you like, he can do that too.
His debut album titled Start Breaking My Heart is spliced with arcs of rainbow melody, hopscotch percussion patterns, and playground children laughing. Humanity and nature are strong threads through this album: beauty and mystery are revealed in the mundane and ordinary. It’s kind of a distillation of those rare moments when you look around and feel a strange glow of contentment -some friends called over unexpectedly, your room is tidy for once and not strewn with leftover apple cores, banana skins and orange peels. And it was a nice day for record shopping. Things could be worse, but they’re not. For that you are truly grateful.
Preferring to record a melody straight up rather than sample someone else’s, Dan plays guitars and keyboards combining these basic elements with computer trickery. It gives the album an electronic organic feel, warm but with a slightly uptight twitch, like you know he’s going to produce some really banging dancefloor track one day. Not today, though. While there’s a lot going on – some extraordinary explosions of rapid fire laser beats, out of which fairy dust nursery rhymes come dancing, Start Breaking My Heart is so beautifully arranged – equal parts grace and dexterity – it manages to both stimulate and soothe at the same time. Walking and chewing gum. Nifty, eh?
Exclusive North American Version Features Give’r EP!
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