Clark Body Riddle
Warp, 2006
As he was making his third album for Warp, Chris Clark was living a happy little life. Weekends were spent in Welsh caves, chanting with chums into a dictaphone. And, days went by, either drumming to Krautrock in his Birmingham studio or pitch-shifting creaking door recordings until they sounded like free jazz experiments.
He was doing as he pleased, fusing it all with evocative waves of sombre electronica, organic beats, glacial soft synths, and icy acid. It was a sparse, odd flavour. And the telling sound of a man making music with little money, on a diet of mainly liquified vegetables.
“I was really skint at the time,” says Clark. “Basically eating cabbage and bean soup. But, I was the happiest I think I’ve ever been, because I just knew I had this album. That’s all I needed.”
His Spartan lifestyle ran over into his production, as he trimmed away any excess fat, concentrating on achieving deft live and expertly chopped drumming, alongside strains of the strongest sound design of his career.
“I was really getting into just those two elements, without anything else,” says Clark. “And I would just let that run. Getting this really sort of cold, Florian Hecker-type sound. That kind of weird sound design. But, with really loose jazzy drums over it. And that was a really strange mix, and I hadn’t heard that before.”
It was like Can and DJ Shadow made
