Daniel Victor Snaith is a Canadian composer, musician, and recording artist who has performed under the stage names Caribou, Manitoba, and Daphni.
Career
Snaith originally recorded under the stage name Manitoba, but after being threatened with a lawsuit by Richard "Handsome Dick" Manitoba, formerly of punk band The Dictators, Snaith changed his performance name to Caribou. Snaith's previous full-length albums were then re-released under the new moniker, and The Milk of Human Kindness was released in 2005 by Domino. In June that year the album topped the !earshot Campus and Community Radio Top 200 chart. When playing gigs, Snaith usually performs with a live band and plays percussion. Ex-bandmates include bassist Andy Lloyd of Born Ruffians and drummer Peter Mitton, now a producer for CBC radio. Currently, the live band consists of Snaith, Ryan Smith, Brad Weber, and John Schmersal. Live shows also often include complex video projections on a large screen, as captured in a DVD released in November 2005. "In music I will have an idea to put some different sounds together or a melody that meshes with a chord sequence or a sonic mood," said Snaith in an interview. "I'm not the type of person who takes physical things apart and plays around with them, but I like taking mental ideas apart and playing around with them. That's what appeals to me about what I've spent my life doing." Caribou's 2007 album Andorra won the 2008 Polaris Music Prize, and his DJ-influenced 2010 album Swim was on the 2010 Polaris Music Prize shortlist. In June 2013, Snaith's studio album, Jiaolong, released under the moniker Daphni, was longlisted for the 2013 Polaris Music Prize. In December 2011, Caribou curated the All Tomorrow's Parties "Nightmare Before Christmas" festival in Minehead, England, alongside co-curators Battles and Les Savy Fav. Caribou was awarded Essential Mix of the Year in 2014 by Mixmag for his "Essential Mix" on 18 October 2014. Caribou's 2014 album Our Love received the IMPALA Album of the Year Award. In 2015, Up In Flames was selected by fans to be one of the ten albums re-issued by The Leaf Label as part of the label's 20th anniversary celebrations. This saw the album released on limited edition double vinyl and made available to fans via the PledgeMusic service.
Personal life
In 2005, Snaith received a doctorate in mathematics from Imperial College London, for work on Overconvergent Siegel Modular Symbols under Kevin Buzzard. Snaith described his work as "original, but I would still call it trivial."
