Clark - Body Riddle (Warp)
4/5
By: Charlie Potter
We don't cover as much electronica as we'd like on this site mainly because we are a bunch of guitar loving non threateningly dressed indie losers with long hair (myself included), but I assure you we love it, and cultural innovation is far higher on our list of what is important (it's a big list) than trendy clothes.
After a few seconds of the gentle sound of the CD spinning in my player (so it's not vinyl crackling, but meh), I'm thrown into an at once both warm and cold sound of percussion and resonate melodies - oh yeahhh Chris, that's right, sooth me, mmm...warm my bones and chill my soul Mr Clark...
Warp veteran mr Chris Clark has been making great albums since the turn of the century, and 'Body Riddle' is just as great, if not better. It still seems that it's the earlier Warp signings that are still making the most interesting music, and whilst they're not doing anything too much different to what they were doing in the first place it's still fresh sounding because none of the other genres seem to be able to take on board the vast influence of these incredible one man orchestras. Perhaps it's just because it is so difficult to make and so time consuming, but you can certainly hear the difference between this and one of those indie bands that oh so daringly use a bit of sound manipulation. Every tiny little detail of the sound has been carefully considered to not only work in it's own right, but to play off of all the other sounds in the composition - that includes panning the compression, the e.q. and the volume. This is definitely one for listening to in headphones.
This is the Chris Clark album that you could probably play to your mum (depending on your mum) - it's not as glitched and hard hitting as some of his previous recordings, but at the same time it's not much of a surprise. With all its airy chromatic percussion and full glowing tones it sounds like it could even be something from The Leaf Label. But at the same time, if you look for it, there are some fairly active and hard beats on this album. It's certainly one to wean your friends on to electronica with, perhaps if you've a friend that can't quite cope with the crazy off beat glitch of some electronica, 'Body Riddle' would be a good way to help said companion on to the path of the good and just.
This album can probably be summed up in terms of how it sounds (I wouldn't want to guess exactly how this album was made) as a beautiful combination of broken old junk that has been given new purpose amidst simple, majestically orchestrated strings. It won't disappoint fans of Clark himself, and will hopefully turn a lot more people who think that there's only Aphex Twin and Squarepusher that make good computer generated music onto what he's doing.
Artists in this article: Clark, Clarkesville, Clarky Cat
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