by RAF KATIGBAK

The results are in. The world-renowned scientitians at the Worldwide Centre for Musicological Researchings have met, and the verdict is final: place-name bands suck. In a controlled study, cringe-o-meter readings for bands like Chicago and Nazareth were off the scale (there is even cursory evidence that Kansas’s “Carry on My Wayward Son” causes cancer in lab rats), finally proving what lite-rock stations have indicated all along: geographically monikered musical acts blow goats.

There are, of course, a few exceptions. Besides Europe, who totally rule, Manitoba (aka Dan Snaith) is one. Following the underground success of his first, experimental-electronic album Start Breaking My Heart, the Dundas, Ont., native (now living in London, England) is currently touring with his band of harmonious hosers in support of his latest opus, the refreshingly blissful and psychedelic Up in Flames. The Mirror recently caught up with Snaith to talk IDM, bear masks and the Great One.

Mirror: Okay, so how did you get from the melodic IDM sound of your first album to the euphoric psychedelia of Up in Flames?

Dan Snaith: I was never really exclusively or even mainly into electronic music. It’s funny because, when I started touring for my first album, I was meeting up with a whole new group of people where electronic music was the main part of their record collection. Some guys I met only had Warp Records in their collection and that really freaked me out. It’s absurd, obviously—there’re some other great records that didn’t come out in the last 10 years on Warp.

M: How do you think we got stuck in this sort of redundant Aphex Twin/Boards of Canada loop?

DS: In England at least, the whole techno rave movement started off as a bit of a big “fuck you” to pop music culture. They had the “Screw you, I’m going to take a lot of E and listen to this stuff you think is the devil’s music” kind of attitude. Because of that, it developed a rather insular nature that looked inwards rather than looking outwards, which probably made it go around in circles.

M: I’ve seen you perform live before and it seems that for you, the show is as important as the music.

DS: When I go to a show, I want to be blown away. So when I started doing a laptop show, I wanted to make people dance. This album is a good opportunity to put together a band that will hopefully have the same effect on people. The music sounds very elated, it translates well live.

M: I hear there’s some bear masks involved.

DS: There are some bear masks. Apparently there’re some guys over here that dress up as owls and they have machines implanted in logs, so they’re actually playing logs. It probably sounds 10 times better than it is.

M: The rest of your band is Canadian too. Are you guys reppin’ our home and native land on tour?

DS: We’ve been touring around with this British band manager and a sound guy and all we do is talk to ’em about “the Great One.” We say things like, “Do you know why the other players in the league don’t bodycheck ’im? It’s out of respect, man,” over and over. You couldn’t find a bigger bunch of hosers on the road than us.

With Prefuse 73 and Four Tet at
Cabaret on Wednesday, May 28, 9pm, $15

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