Chris Clark returns with a new album after last year's disappointing Turning Dragon and the single EP Growls Garden. Totems Flare is being marketed as a mixture of his more dancefloor driven tracks and his earlier more IDM work. In actuality, this is something totally different from Clark. First off, vocals are almost omnipresent on this album in a Tim Exile kind of way. The single "Growls Garden" really shows this as Chris whispers and talks over the most complex beats he's ever created. The disparate sounds Chris is trying to weave together makes this album very ambitious, but in a not so serious way. Elements of 8 bit, acid, IDM, techno, film scores, and vocal pop collide constantly, sometimes all in the span of one track. On my first couple of listens I got the feeling that Chris was trying to diversify too much instead of just focusing on one sound as was the case with Empty the Bones of You, but after a few listens the album starts to come together in your head and it works. I guess you could say this is what the music from early video games would sound like if it kept evolving like video games have. I still would have preferred is Chris focused his a sound a little more, but what he's doing on this album is super impressive, and really attacking this concept of experimental pop music head on, and in a more successful way than Tim Exile's album on Warp.

Style: Experimental, Acid

RIYL: The Tuss, Tim Exile

Buy from Amazon  MySpace

Download: Rainbow Voodoo

Tags See All Tags

2009  Acid  Clark  Experimental  The Tuss  Tim Exile  Totems Flare  Warp  onecaseman 

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