Customer Reviews

Start Breaking My Heart

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This album is like a breath of fresh air sweetened by soft slippery sounds of organic sunshiney love. Manitoba is in the same class as Boards of Canada (Music Has The Right to Children) with quiet tripped out beats, dreamy samples, light outer-surface waves of space, and a sound that will keep you warm and smiling. Start Breaking My Heart is a must have album for those electronica loving fans!

I don't have or know an album that I've listened to more or that I love more. This album is an emotion in itself. The feeling I get from listening to this album can only be accomplished by listening to this album. I have felt this emotion nowhere else. Where ever you live: The Desert, The North, Africa, The Big City, this album will mold itself to the particular surrounding and define it. There is not a second that is not perfection. I cannot imagine that there will ever be an album that will even come close to what we have here. My life is blessed.

This CD had to grow on me, but once it did, it really stuck! This is a really great blend of jazz, chillout and breakbeat...with an almost 70's feel to it sometimes, and Japanese feel to it other times. Whatever, I suck at explaining these things. Just listen to it, and you'll know what I mean. It's worth the buy!

After listening to Caribou/Manitoba's entire catalogue, I find it obvious that this is his first proper album. Although the foundation for ideas that appear later in subsequent albums, the ambition is not as clear. In other words....I'm not confident that I would have followed Dan's career as closely as I have if I heard Start Breaking My Heart before Up In Flames.

The first few tracks are brilliant but for the remainder of the album there are only parts and tid bits that stand out ("Lemon Yoghourt"/"Happy Ending"). The layering is often just too obvious as he chooses archetypical moments to strip away parts and return them to the mix. This seems to be something with which he has become much more adept in recent years. Aditionally, it is not entirely surprising (in context to his catalogue) that he started along on such a digital path. His love of beats and rythm is something echoed throughout his career, but its more recent manifestations have been via chaotic drum swirlings that remain both organic and more enjoyable.

I imagine at the time this album was conceived Dan may have been finding conflict between his education in Mathematics and his love for composing music. This album was likely created out of a "hobby" scaled commitment, in contrast to his later creations which contain a painstaking attention to detail. This isn't to say don't pick this thing up (as it still stands out from others within this type of genre), but just to say these are rather humble beginnings for such a breakaway artist.

Boards of Canada, early Aphex Twin atmosphere, superb percussive flourishes, 70's t.v. theme song hints but all pretty organic and not really derivative. Only problem is I don't know if I'll enjoy this in a month. WARNING, if you like this and you're thinking of buying his latest 'Up in Flames' make sure you listen to it before you purchase. 'Up in Flames'is almost a totally different genre, maybe a different band?

I cannot express how much I love this album. I love it. I adore it. I have listened to this album repeatedly now, for years, and I have still never gotten tired of it.
Man, it is great!
From the first moth-wing flutterings that lead into the album's kicky beats, to the instruments that sound as if they're being played underwater, to the samples that close the album on a happy, hopeful note, I love this album.
Dan Snaith is NOT Squareusher. He doesn't write series of noises strung together with the help of a keyboard. Dan Snaith (the genius of Manitoba/Caribou) is a composer. He writes songs. Pieces. Movements. That he often uses laptops and synthesizers to do so is irrelevant.
This is an album full of great music. It will relax you, energize, haunt you, and make you want to dance. Play it late at night on a dirt road, as dry grass pokes out from every curve and dusty hills rise black from the roadside...and it might even scare you.
It's the perfect score for everything, and I am not exaggerating when I say "Start Breaking My Heart" is my favorite album ever. Ever. To hear it, is to love it.
It's cerebral in the way that J Smith and Bach are, yet happy and fun enough to dance to.
Buy this album, and buy anything Manitoba or Caribou ever records. I promise you won't regret it.

One of modern glitch-sampling's more solid releases, I ended up being surprised at the amount of depth to be heard here in a genre that generally underwhelms as a rule of thumb. Manitoba's first full length does occasionally suffer from excessive pattern-making, superficial-experimenting and void-filling, but on the whole we have an hour long, adept micro-processor's compelling ear candy. Part of the fun lies in Snaith's willingness to ride out a sound pattern no matter how awkward it first sounds on the surface, usually resulting in more challenging and grooving beep-fests.