(when i get back to the alter-reality, something else will appear in this space.)
i wouldn't have bothered going to see caribou on my own; i just don't find his work to be very impressive. but, a friend of mine had recently suffered a relatively serious injury that required him to use a cane and he basically needed an escort to the show to part the crowds in front of him and keep people from bumping into him. i lived a few blocks from the venue, and it was a saturday night, so i brought him to the show on his request...
i was actually surprised by the amount of actual instruments used by caribou, as i was expecting an uneventful, tepid and flatly generic "idm" set. the material was maybe a bit funkier than i expected, and maybe a little less atmospheric, but i really didn't walk away from the set with much. i mean, it was really almost a disco concert; i wasn't expecting that, but it didn't do much to sway me, either. the record that caribou would eventually release in 2010 was a very big step forwards for him, but he wasn't there yet and there really wasn't much to grasp on to for the set....
the opening band made up for the price of admission, though. i had never heard of them and didn't bother to check out any samples, but they really drew me in with sheer volume. i grew up listening to a list of incredibly abstract industrial/electronic records from the 90s, and have just become distraught by the genre's absolute collapse into artlessness. fuck buttons during this period may have been operating on a largely aesthetic basis, but they at least got the aesthetic down about as perfectly as they possibly could have. i wish i could experience this kind of head cave more often; as it is, this show was an unexpected treat, and i'm glad i happened to experience it by accident.
i do not have footage for ottawa, but the setlists seem to have been stable across the tour, so the following video is a strong representation, down to the table, which i distinctly recall because it was at ground level.