Somewhere along the way to completing Andorra, the glorious fourth album in a string of amazing records by Caribou and/or Manitoba, Caribou wrangler Dan Snaith found himself bouncing on a trampoline. It all started when Snaith's wife saw an ad for trampoline lessons. "Last year, I was just locked away recording almost all the time," Snaith says on the phone from a tour stop in Fargo, North Dakota. "I didn't really understand what trampoline lessons were. It's treated really quite seriously, like it's gymnastics or something. I found the idea totally hilarious, but I went to check it out and it was something that was so completely different from anything I was doing. I needed that kind of escape to keep me from getting too sucked into what I was doing. I'm the kind of person who can just work on [making music] all the time and that's probably not the best thing."

And though he says the trampolining didn't directly affect the outcome of the new record, I tell Snaith Andorra is perfect trampolining music in my mind. Like letting loose on a trampoline, the music on Andorra (and much of Snaith's back catalogue) is bouncy, hypnotic and will likely lead to euphoria.

When it came to recording the new album, Snaith's approach was a little different than usual. "The focus for me this time around was compositional ideas, [whereas] in the past, it was all about combinations of sounds and more production ideas," he says, "That didn't mean I couldn't have the production stuff in there, but it was a whole new thing to add to the music which is why the songs sound more like songs." He found that writing actual compositions before recording them was an exciting way of working.

Save for a couple of samples (a harp, string section) that Snaith doesn't have access to, he plays everything else on Andorra. "I record everything straight onto a computer which is how I've always worked on all of these albums," Snaith explains. "It's a really flexible setup and I've just been able to do whatever I want."

Snaith's newfound appreciation for composing is not a surprise when you consider that his other passion is mathematics. In 2005, he completed his PhD in mathematics. While working towards his doctorate,
he was concurrently working on music; he liked both fields equally and found creativity in each. "Mathematics is more creative than people imagine it from their high school mathematics lessons," he explains. "They're both the kind of things I can get lost and self-absorbed in," just like listeners get lost in the pulsing blur of Caribou's tunes.

When most of us work towards our degrees, we usually encounter some form of accumulated student debt, be it through loans or lines of credit. However, for Snaith, that wasn't the case. "I've been really lucky as I went through university completely funded the whole way through, by scholarships, so I wasn't having to worry about money then," he says. He was a teacher's assistant at the same time, so between that and the funding, it meant he could spend his free time making music without working another job.

By the time he was finishing his PhD, his music was really taking off and taking up more of his time and mathematics was put aside. "Right when I finished my PhD, [music] became something that could support me to the extent of paying my rent," he says.

He’s realistic when he thinks about his music career and realizes there may well come a time when music no longer pays the bills. "It's definitely not something you can count on, even building a career in,
as it's the kind of thing that can come and go," he says. "If that happened, I'd be more than happy doing mathematics again and have music as a hobby. I'm enjoying music and I'll probably do it as long as it's feasible. I wouldn't mind doing something else. I guess I'd always be doing music as a hobby."