Clark - Totems Flare

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Ask Chris Clark a question and he will answer it. This might sound like stating the bleeding obvious, but in the case of electronic music producers it is pretty unusual. Mystique and abstraction are everything for the kind of musicians he generally gets compared to: musicians who tend to put intense effort into obscuring their personalities, or at very least enforcing a sharp separation of personality and music. Not so Chris. Ask him about family, friends, lifestyle, music-making, whatever, and he will tell you what he thinks. His answer might be delivered with sharp wit, or be followed by a shrewd observation that gives you a new twist on the topic in hand, but at its core it will be straightforward.

This straightforwardness bears examination, because it is something which has always been present in Clark's music too, and which is emerging more and more with each release, culminating in the triumphant drive of Totems Flare: a record so immediate and ambitious there is no knowing where it might take him. That's not to say that Totems Flare doesn't have all the hyperactive intellect and technically dazzling detail that you would expect from a WARP artist - it does, in bucketloads. But there is a sense that all the production finesse, all the cleverness, all the tricks work together in the construction of lethally powerful delivery units for the insidious melodic hooks and rave rushes that are constantly centre stage in the tracks.

There is musicianship at work - Chris uses guitar, drums and piano, albeit unrecognisably heavily processed, and his programming is virtuosic - but there is no noodling here, nor is there any sense that this is music only for the cognoscenti. As Chris says "the ridiculous brute force of modern pop engineering is definitely not something I've ever shied away from" - and that is the context in which this album needs to be heard.

This refusal to be more-underground-than-thou, and the willingness to take influence from anywhere and reach out to anyone, can be traced back to Chris's first experiences in music. "I've had issues with people who insist on being in one music 'gang' since school", he says; "It always just seemed like ignorance to me, like a misguided contempt for other things just for the sake of fitting in. I ended up having about four groups of friends because I liked Seattle grunge type music, I liked acid and electronics, I liked hip hop, I liked all sorts and I wasn't going to separate out one that was 'my thing'."

Listen to Dance Playlist - 12-09-2010

Also See: ilikemusic.com | Clark

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