(Leaf/Inertia)

By all rights, ‘The Milk Of Human Kindness’ should be arriving to you on record store shelves as the third Manitoba album (and follow-up to 2003’s stellar ‘Up In Flames’), but unfortunately recent (and also somewhat bizarre) legal events have necessitated that Canadian (and now UK-based) producer / musician Dan Snaith shift the moniker of his current musical incarnation towards another intrinsically Canadian name – in this case, Caribou. With Snaith already having carved a backcatalogue two albums deep under the ‘Manitoba’ name (2001’s laptop / IDM jazz-tinged ‘Start Breaking My Heart’ and 2003’s psychedelic rock meets Sun Ra explosion ‘Up In Flames’), a certain ‘Handsome’ Dick Manitoba of little-remembered NYC punks The Dictators subpoened Snaith out of the blue for ‘trademark infringement’ despite the fact that (a). Handsome Dick had never released anything under the ‘Manitoba’ name, and (b). Snaith’s music as Manitoba was never going to be confused by anyone as being some kind of Dictators-related project. To the best of my knowledge, ‘Manitoba’ itself being the name of a Canadian province would surely be something that would be in the public domain, but then again, I’ve never checked to see if anyone ever got sued by ‘Chicago.’ Still, the main substance seems to be that with Handsome Dick showing no signs of backing off and the prospect of a court case looming in the loser-pays both legal costs system of the US, Snaith thought the potential risks too high, opting reluctantly for the name-change.

The good news here however is that while these looming legal issues may have frustrated Snaith, they certainly haven’t dulled his creative juices at all, with ‘The Milk Of Human Kindness’ picking up smoothly from ‘Up In Flames’ broad canvas of dense Spaceman 3 / Mercury Rev-tinged psychedelic rock and electronics, no mean feat indeed given the huge sonic jump forward between the previous two albums. Those who witnessed the drastic shift that occurred in the Manitoba live show between Dan’s initial DJ and laptop-based sets at 2002’s Sound Summit and the two-drummer, electronics, glockenspiel and guitar-based lineup that re-emerged last year will already know what I mean by this.

Opening track (and first single) ‘Yeti’ bursts open with a pinwheel burst of harmonised vocals and spinning samples before Snaith’s own gentle folk-inflected vocal enters over a wheezing soft-focus backdrop of mellotrons and looped acoustic guitars, a curiously house meets motorik-tinged sleighbell rhythm bouncing its way along before the entire track descends into a furious storm of crashing drums, squealing theremins and hyper-dextrous digital edits. Indeed, one of Snaith’s greatest skills on display here is his deft ability (much like J. Swinscoe of the Cinematic Orchestra and also perhaps Jaga Jazzist) to reconstitute a ‘virtual band’ from a composite of performances seamlessly to a point at which you scarcely notice the joins (until a particularly overt digital effect enters or you realise that there’s no way a real drummer could be playing ‘that’ rhythm). After this suitably rousing opening, ‘Subotnick’ offers a short instrumental segue that seems oddly bare compared to the two psychedelic rushes of vivid sound that bookend it, with a scratchy-sounding funk guitar loop circling against moody strings, before ‘A Final Warning’ takes things out towards Sun Ra Arkestra territory, a slightly bizarre phonetic sample that calls to mind Matmos’ ‘Spondees’ vocal manipulation curving its way over a backing that sits somewhere between epic, brooding film score and Brian Wilson-esque psychedelic surf-rock, howling theremins and vocals spinning their way through a thick dense battery of tribal percussion, phasing spectral electronics and chiming steel-string guitars.

‘Lord Leopard’ offers another stripped-down segue moment, with an almost chamber-music inspired harpsichord loop tumbling its way over some boom-bap edged hiphop beats and sampled yells, calling to mind something Morris dancers might play in the car on their way to a gang hit, while ‘Bees’ veers towards groovy surf rock that calls to mind a far more chilled out and feathery Jesus & Mary Chain, rich Arkestra-esque horns slowly building around the plucked acoustic guitars and shimmering fiddles as distant police sirens interweave into a crashing storm of digitally-edited drum rhythms and loping bass that calls to mind Can. By comparison, ‘Hello Hammerheads’ offers one of this album’s most gentle acoustic moments, Snaith’s delivery almost calling to mind Paul Simon over looped acoustic guitars and spinning sampled noises; with his virtually untreated / altered vocal serving as both the foreground and anchor for the track’s oddly centreless and floaty elements, it’s easily one of the most direct and intimate settings he’s placed his music in so far.

‘Brahminy Kite’ fuses a furious rhythmic volley of drums alongside Snaith’s curiously prog-tinged vocal as buzzing electronics and bleeping organs trace their way around brooding horns and droning swathes of glitchy noise, the entire track dubbing itself right out at the end in a cosmic rush of jazz horns and furious cymbals, while ‘Pelican Narrows’ places a tumbling piano loop that almost calls to mind an icecream van’s chimes over a loping backdrop of hiphop beats, plucked acoustic guitar and curiously Elizabethan-sounding harpsichords, calling to mind Prefuse 73 or Daedelus’ beat-based constructions. Finally, ‘Barnowl’ takes things out on perhaps this album’s most spectacular psychedelic rock-laced moment, arcade machine-esque bleeping electronics and droning guitars building their way over tribal-sounding drums into an epic storm that calls to mind Spiritualised in full flight, screeching theremins hitting the redline as the guitars bleed into a wall of sound around the vast droning keyboards and electronics.

‘The Milk Of Human Kindness’ is a stunning follow-up to 2003’s epic ‘Up In Flames’ that shows Snaith’s creative inspiration undented by his recent legal hurdles, and though the name on the sleeve may be different on the sleeve this time around, fans of the vivid fusion of jazz, psychedelic folk-rock and electronics explored on the previous two Manitoba albums are certainly not going to be disappointed by what’s in store here. While I felt that some of the shorter instrumental segue tracks here felt strangely bare by comparison to the embarrassment of riches and sheer sonic headrush captured on the more ‘band oriented’ moments here, slightly disrupting the Arkestra-esque flow of the first half of this record, this seems a fairly negligible point when the contents on offer here are this good. Highly recommended.

Check out http://www.caribou.fm and http://www.theleaflabel.com.