It seems a visit to Bristol in 1999 and a subsequent weekend spent enjoying the sights and sounds of The Big Chill, the UK's favourite pulse-quenching summer festival, were enough to inspire Dan Snaith into giving his own method of musicianship a bit of a tweak. Fridge were the guilty party and Kieran Hebden (of Fridge and Four Tet) was the talented musician with whom Dan drew his inspiration as well as a solid future friendship.
You may have already heard the twenty two-year-olds previous two releases, "People Eating Fruit" and "Paul's Birthday". They received much attention and much applause. The album runs in a similar vein.
"Start Breaking My Heart" breaks conventionality. If you find comfort in categorisation, you could be disappointed. Toronto based Dan has pieced together an intricate musical jigsaw that refuses to fit into any goddam pigeonhole. He delicately pieces together both harmonious sounds and indistinguishable noises and beats with a main emphasis on keyboards of varying levels of distortion (well he is a classically trained pianist, after all).
Another of the Dan's speciality subjects is maths. And as a mathematician, Dan's approach to his music is quite surprising. For someone drawn to studying a subject where only the rational and the real conquer, creating anything which questions conventionality and discipline shouldn't really sit comfortably. However, his music obviously does, both with himself and with his audience. The cacophony of cowbells, metallic beats, chimes, keyboards and rolling double bass is thrown together in an irrational manner.
He creates delicate pieces that all fall into place with each other but fall into disarray when you dissect them on their own. He manages to dismantle the order of musical construction like a cautious Eno whilst creating simple and beautiful jazz induced, electronica.
