I love a bit of Clark, like. At first I wasn't that keen, wrongly writing him off as just being a mixture of the Warp big guns, but I think over time he's really found a unique sound and now his stuff's easily recognisable as his own work. The 'Growl's Garden' EP keeps a similar kind of sound set to the excellent Turning Dragon with its super dirty decaying percussion and jarring synths; somehow fashioning them into a fantastically banging near-pop song on the title track, the first he's done to feature his vocals (messed with as they are). 'Gonk Roughage' on the other side repeats the trick of 'Volcan Veins' from his last LP, that one cut up soulful vocals to make some sort of mental deconstructive house tune and this time he's gone for hip-hop with the sample progressively being nudged further and further out of the way by the encroaching hyper sequenced chaos. The later tunes get a bit more ambient, with 'Farewell Mining Town' complementing the atmosphere of a ruined England that he's recently started to build so well with a ray of hope that sounds like the aforementioned town slowly rising up into heaven. A quality six tracker from Warp on a CD and very limited 12"!
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What their label says...
Chris Clark returns with six brand new tracks of powerful, atmospheric electronic music.
This maritime themed album with its Nordic sea town titles conjures up images of crashing waves and men battling against the elements. Tracks that reflect the steely silver of Berlin, where Chris wrote the material, sample the sounds of boots treading on snow and rocks roughly thrown together to form the urgent basslines that run throughout.
The lead track ‘Growls Garden’ features haunting vocals from Chris himself.
The CD is limited to 600 copies and the vinyl to 300 copies.
Tracklisting:
Growls Garden The Magnet Mine Seaweed Gonk Roughage Distant Father Torch Farewell Mining Town
