Caribou Curated a Playlist

If you were given the opportunity to meet Dan Snaith, a.k.a. Caribou, and to ask him one question, what would you ask? One question I always like to ask my favorite musicians is: “What music are you listening to right now?” You have to ask about what they’re listening to currently because if you make the question too general, for example, “What’s your favorite music,” you will only get a general, albeit good-natured, answer. I have learned this from experience. Fortunately for us, earlier this year Caribou published a playlist of his favorite songs that spans an impressive variety of decades, countries and genres. The playlist can be found on Youtube in its colossal 1,000-track entirety, but here is a slightly more curated version for your listening pleasure. The artist described this playlist, which features numerous contributions from Kraftwerk, as “a musical history of [his] life”. We’ve been following Caribou’s career since 2005 when he came out with the album, The Milk of Human Kindness, so it is particularly fascinating to sift through the layers of influences that emerge from this playlist. The sample here includes classics from Minnie Ripperton, obscure electronic tracks from Koushik, hip-hop, funk, jazz and more.