Influences – Clark

I remember first hearing Suicide and being blown away with how deliberately thin/reedy and raspy they make their synths. It sort of inverts expectations of what we should expect a modern electronic record to sound like.

I like people who deliberately make sounds stick out, it’s a bit pokey, it’s cocky yet playfully so. There’s a gleeful feel to it and the vocals are amazing too.

We live in quite a conservative era where electronic music needs to sound “large” in quite a one size fits all way, like all of the humanity is getting squeezed out of music by some horrible systematised drive to towards homogenity. You want “phat” music, just load up the “phat” preset on the same software that everyone else uses.

Ha this is turning into a rant. Well then……a rant it shall be.

I love computers, but simultaneously get freaked out with how easy it is to slip into cruise control when using them, I always bear it in mind. I quite often like to turn my back on technology, I like having days of where I just thump bits of wood or draw pictures of strange sequences of notes that I want to hear, like a caveman making cave paintings. It makes me come back to it re-energised, and use it in a more controlling, less passive way. It feels healthy, I totally recommend it.

From Yo Yo Ma, there’s this melodic shift at around 1:14 that sounds like the sort of totally contemporary pop riff most people would hunt down for a whole career and repeat for 4 minutes once they discovered it, but for this ole’ genius sod it’s just 12 perfect seconds amongst another 2 minutes of equally perfect musical seconds.

I love the way El-P uses pure synth noise for his snares, such weird funk in this, like it slips and slides rips it’s self to pieces but quite enjoys the process. Killer Mike certainly doesn’t lack confidence as a Microphone Controller, does he.

I remember hearing this when I was about 16, I thought it was alright, nothing special, a bit too funky for my palette, you know when stuff is just a bit too sexy/pukey?

I mean for me, the saxophone is always just going to be far too sexy.

But anyway, this track…When that taped out synth shredded through the mix it blew my mind, it must be a moog or a modular something or other. But I remember distinctly thinking “Yes this is it now we are talking”. It was the first time I’d ever heard a detuned synth like this one. I love how much it wigs out at the end. I’ve got a certain soft spot for funk/rare groove tracks when they are done with such commitment. Without saxophone, preferably.

I reckon that last album of theirs was one of their best. It’s quite a demanding listen but LOL so it effing should be, it’s Autechre, not Air.

Airtechre? Can’t really imagine what Air would bring to the table. Something far too sexy, in all likelihood. A big lilac saxophone.

Anyway this track is brutal, it’s pretty sort of tender at the same time though, it’s the sound of insects collaborating, being a bit cheeky, and trying to work out how to build a bone palace…Out of human remains.

This track contains some of the weirdest, most profound passages of melody I’ve ever heard, especially the Ondes Martenot version.

The performance is quite muted, but there is this amazing glow to it, like it’s so candid, generous, sad, happy, mournful and hopeful. It’s just about everything this piece of music. Astonishing. I don’t know much of Messiaen and I got put off investigating because lots of academics always go on about him in a deliberately obtuse way that seems condescending to everyone else, like he’s being canonised and kept in an exclusive realm that only over educated, upper middle class people can have access too. Which I’m not into. You can like Messiaen and Beyonce and White House, all at the same time and not worry about your haircut too much and that’s alright, isn’t it? Yes.

This track sort of oscillates between a state of pure horror and pure knarly euphoric, adrenalised bliss. There’s a timeless primacy to this track, like they captured something quite frightening and transcendental. There’s music that’s good to use in adverts for moisturising cream, and then there’s music like this. So raw, out there and totally impossible to define or pin down really, just incredible.

All about that tom drum sound, and the weird confrontational lyrics that might upset some, but I personally find brilliant. It’s so well put together; poetic, brutal, hilarious.

“Stop Giggling, Chicken Skin”

It’s quite hard to argue that that’s *not* a genius lyric.

I had a mate who once told me that he thought White House were too scary and he couldn’t listen to them if he was depressed. I said to him just imagine that the sort of confrontational aspect is more like your mum chiding you for not doing the washing up, then you can learn to enjoy it. It’s pure circus grit, I love it.

Just a lovely understated track that overwhelms if caught in the right shade of light, or the right time of day. Her restraint and command over relatively small resources is fantastic.