Daphni: "Mapfumo"

Besides defining exactly what Dan Snaith meant when he coined the term “liquid dance music,” Swim (2010) also marked the first Caribou release to navigate a decidedly darker terrain. And I don’t mean “dark” solely in terms of some vague eeriness that permeated a track like “Found Out”; I’m talking about the record’s locale, one that established itself as exotic on “Odessa” and freefell into tribal rhythms on “Bowls.” These sonic thickets didn’t make for an album-spanning subtext but they did furnish Swim‘s club-friendly abode with a few loose vines. And coming from a Zombies-loving PhD grad out of Dundas, Ontario, Snaith’s newfound jungle décor was bound to turn some heads.

All of this is to say that Daphni didn’t arrive from nowhere; on the contrary, “Mapfumo” stems directly from Swim‘s tour EP. At the half-hour mark of “Mix,” to be precise. That massive first cut from the show-only release more formally introduced Caribou’s mounting tendency to globetrot, while dropping about half of “Mapfumo” along the way. Such a backwards discovery, of finding this track essentially fully formed almost a year prior to Daphni’s conception, should question the rationale behind Snaith’s dual projects. But this distinction represents a healthy divide: Caribou’s level of fame carries steadfast expectations whereas Daphni can afford to base its young reputation around a reworking of some obscure African song from the mid ’80s.

And with the unabridged version on Daphni Edits Vol. 1 clocking a seamless twelve-and-a-half minutes, that’s exactly what “Mapfumo” does, stretching Thomas Mapfumo and the Black Unlimited’s “Shumba” into a spellbinding web of staccato rhythms. Given how the venture also lends Snaith further license to explore music from distant countries and play with notions of “otherness,” it’s striking to note how little of “Mapfumo” sounds outwardly tampered with. As the song’s scattered guitar lines interlock densely enough to connote texture, Snaith’s deft skill only protrudes through percussion, first padding it with bass before arming it into a minimal techno beat by the five-minute mark.

“Repetition is a form of change,” Brian Eno once stated, and Snaith works that sleight of hand well, looping “Shumba”’s fragile guitar pieces in a bid to disguise its synthesizing underbelly. That’s the evolution “Mapfumo” traces, through the nexus where cultural rhythms and electronic beats camouflage as one another. An understated achievement that nonetheless dwells in Swim‘s shadows, “Mapfumo” also represents what we can only hope Daphni will maintain over future volumes: a dream-zone between otherworldliness and passive dance sensibilities. Caribou’s fringe poles, really.