Daniel Snaith, the multi-instrumentalist who makes up the heart and soul of Canadian electro-pop outfit Caribou, is something of a nerd. It's not that he's a maths genius - although he's the son of a British university mathematics professor and the possessor of a doctorate in the same discipline. It's not that he works almost completely alone to produce albums of stunning complexity. It's not even that he remains decidedly un-rock'n'roll with ungainly glasses and a bit of a square haircut. It's more that he approaches his craft with the dedication of a trainspotter, seeking out the perfect balance of sound, visuals and atmosphere. For Snaith, pop music is an obsession that has driven him to explore almost every path the art form can take. His current all-consuming preoccupation is electronic dance, which has seen him absorb everything from modern dubstep, 1980s techno, trip hop and all genres in between. It's an obsession that has resulted in the sumptuous new Caribou CD Swim, an album he'll be promoting when he plays his debut Hong Kong gig next month. 'I'd been making pop music but was just suddenly grabbed by dance music, so I began listening and researching the DJs and producers behind the new club sounds. It became very exciting for me and I immersed myself in it,' the Ontario native says down the phone from his adopted hometown, London. Swim, Caribou's third album, is an intricate kaleidoscope of found sounds, samples, programmed beats and instrumental breaks that has shifted Snaith from his position as the darling of North America's psychedelic indie scene firmly into dance's avant garde. Melodically it stands in stark contrast to the critically acclaimed 2007 release Andorra, which won Snaith the Polaris Music Award, Canada's equivalent of the British Mercury Prize, given to the year's most original and groundbreaking album. Andorra was a project that explored textures and moods within a mainly pop-rock vein, harking back to the noodlings of 1960s bands such as the Pretty Things and Syd Barrett's original Pink Floyd. It was a swirling amalgam of melody, atmospheric effects and whispered vocals that put Snaith in the same league as one-man-band bedroom popsters such as San Francisco's Jason Quever, aka Papercuts, and Britain's Dev Hyndes, otherwise known as Lightspeed Champion. While Swim may have a more stripped-down feel than its predecessor, it remains a complex work that requires several listens before its sonic richness comes to the surface. 'It seemed that all of a sudden dance music had become cutting-edge music and bands with guitars, which were dominant and producing great things a few years ago, had become dormant,' says Snaith, whose earlier work under the moniker Manitoba was focused around programmed beats. 'I decided that it was time to go back to dance.' He indulged his reclaimed passion by spending much of the years between Andorra and Swim in London's dubstep clubs, mixing with dance producers and generally absorbing the energy of the new sounds of the city. 'It's not that I started to fraternise with DJs, but I did get to know a few producers and the people behind the music from DJing at clubs in London,' he says. Among his new friends from the dance realm are Detroit figures Theo Parrish and Carl Craig, producer/ DJs acclaimed for taking dance into the realms of classical music. And the associations are quite appropriate for an artist whose current work has been compared with that of Arthur Russell, the minimalist classical composer who became a cult hero in the disco movement of the 1970s and 80s for bringing an avant-garde sensibility to the sounds of Gloria Gaynor. 'The most exciting thing about it for me is that there is a new artist appearing every week and making great dance music,' Snaith says. 'I wanted to do something different and dance was changing and it felt right to return to it.' It may seem logical for someone with a PhD in maths to be attracted to the precise sounds and programmed rhythms of modern dance music, an art form almost entirely built around digital structures and dehumanised beats, but it's an assumption Snaith is at pains to dispel. 'That's a misconception about me - I have never been what you might call mathematical in the way I work,' he says. 'I've never been good with the equipment I use or with machinery in general. You'll find most mathematicians are like that - harebrained and disorganised.' There's another aspect to Swim that separates it from tidy programmed predictability: its lyrics deal with notoriously messy themes of the heart - failed relationships, divorce and unrequited love. 'I felt, for the first time, that I had things to write about, things that were close to me and to the people I am close to,' he says. Such lyrical candour is a departure for Snaith, who, now at 32, considers himself worldly enough to deal with such matters. The results can be heard in Swim's opener, Odessa, which despite its upbeat tempo is peppered with painful passages: 'She's tired of cryin'/ And sick of his lies/ She's suffered him/ For far too many years of her life.' 'These are things that happened to someone close to me. Real things. As I get older I feel a greater need to speak about those things. Before, I would write lyrics to suit a mood or texture in a track.' It made for some uncomfortable moments when Snaith took the new material on the road with his band. 'The first few times I played those songs it was quite difficult, but the response of the crowd, which was to relate to the beat rather than the sentiment of the lyrics, was very exciting. I have always liked juxtaposing sounds and textures, and now there was juxtaposition between the music and the lyrics that was producing an altogether different response to what I might have expected,' he says. 'That spontaneity was really exciting and made it easier to perform the songs.' As for the title, Snaith says he aimed to make 'dance music that sounds like it is made out of water', and he was also learning to swim when he made the CD - an activity that has become an obsession. 'It's partly the reason why the album is called what it is.' But mostly, though, it's an attempt to debunk the belief that dance music is mathematical, logical and devoid of spirit. 'It's not,' he says. 'People associate dance music with being rigid and technical. But it swirls from one side of your head to the other. It has a liquid dynamic.' Caribou, Grappa's Cellar, July 1, Basement, Jardine House, 1 Connaught Place, Central, HK$220 (advance), HK$260 (door). Inquiries: 2521 2322. Doors open at 8pm