Live Broadcast 4pm this Friday with Q+A

On Facebook I guess ?

I was wondering the same thing but lol that hoodie

Q&A report here. I've missed some but w/e.

Still got anything from Totems era kicking around?
Tons. Want to release it at some point. Alot of it is on mediums I don't use much any more. Old hard disks cassette cds etc.

Do you think music theory is an absolute necessity to create electronic music?

theory is a funny one. I've had no formal training but have sort of embedded alot of it in my head through reading up on it. There's something very tedious about being subjected to very technical music that is ALL about the theory. But there's also something tedious about that punk cliche of "I don't want to learn anything new because it will ruin my special magic" I would argue that if you have any magic it wouldn't do any harm to toughen it up to a bit of learning. Abit of the learny stuff is fun fun! Is my less long winded answer.

Are there any visual artists that you feel work with the aesthetic of the new album?

Good question! Yea....alot actually. I was really riffing with Alma Haser who did the cover about Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon. I'm much more into a violent painterly approach, broad brushstrokes then say, a meticulous technical drawing of a Honda motor. I rarely talk about painters, I'm abit crap at it, I just have a gut instinct about what I think is shit hot. I wanted Alma to destroy my face in quite a fashion. It's like a psychedelic version of the T800 anvil head smash at the end of T2.

Evian Christ dear Clark, i recently met you in the chinese administrative region of hong kong, where we were due to perform at sonar festival. as you will recall, we were staying in the hyatt regency hotel, and it was there that i made the ill-fated decision to ask your opinion of the hotel restaurant. you, a respected peer and fellow warp records artist, looked me in the eyes, with complete sincerity (or so i thought), and informed me that the restaurant was wonderful. Clark, please imagine my surprise to discover that the restaurant was, infact, absolutely terrible. my question is this: will you publicly apologise for lying to me about the restaurant

I will never apologise I am the bad news I own the bad news you have nothing on me you can't touch me you can't even taste what fish burger is you swine how you not know of this? It was excellence food and U know it.

How's your actual writing process differs from a track like Slow spines ?

I don't do things now like "oh I wonder what this pencil sharpener would sound like if I sampled it backwards on a dictaphone and put it next to a sound of me whistling backwards in a tunnel"

Do you have any thoughts / tricks for riffing in the emotional rawness?
I generally find I'm quite jolly when writing music. The evil bit of un u.k put me in this breezy lucid mood. I'm not sure 100% raw emotions are that helpful without at least SOME help from your left brain. Leave that to your dreams. Nice to keep a dream diary. If you can't detach and make intuitive musical calculations alongside your raw emotions it's quite hard. I reckon even someone so authentically punk rock like Kurt Cobain was secretly one giant calculating machine. The control on the distortion of his voice, it's too specific, there are too many decisions involved in that for it to be 100% raw. It's a conjuring trick in a way. I like being able to write what ever my emotional state. It provides relief. Having emotional states going in tandem with a physical process of just writing the stuff is the ideal. For me anyway. Phone recordings; awesome. Good way to go I reckon.

On emotional / visceral content in music, & creative process. In my own creation, I value the live emotion feeling - the big challenge is carrying this rawness through the tedium of Ableton etc... the best I've come up with is singing / beatboxing a rough recording into my phone, to try & capture the soul of it, & then xferring to tedium.

I love how the record feels somewhat amorphous in that many of the songs have these transformative moments where they blossom into a different kind of vibe, like going from really heavy percussion (how did you get everything sounding so huge btw?) to more light and airy sections. How was your writing process -- I mean how did you get the puzzle pieces to fit together with these tracks?

Good question too hard to answer now. Glad you appreciate that tho! (lol)

Where does the female(?) voice bit in Talis come from?

That's me! singing onto a Superscope cassette record and then pitched up through a massive plate reverb. I think.

Will you ever release 'Sparrow Arc Tall'?
Would love to, almost have but never quite fits

Clark from my perspective it seems as you have your own view on the "rave scene" and what it should represent and be. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I have this conversation with my fiancé about your music. I say this because of the feelings I get from your music, the titles you choose and your live performances. Is there a love hate relationship with it? How do you feel about the scene when you first started making electronic music VS where it has gone? Can you give artist like myself and others advice on what has made your best shows what they were and why? Much love and as always your music has been a inspiration.

It's all love but my oh my the stuff on the more corporate end of it...the people hanging out backstage while the dj year magically cues up someone else's music on a pre synced usb stick smirking like an over praised child.

You seem to have a bunch of tracks from all over the years that don't seem to fit on albums or just sit around... how about a Feast/Beast type release but with those unreleased/unheard tracks?

possibly yea! Not sure.....hard to curate

Your reverb always sounds so beautiful. Is it just the Space Hall Eventide?

I never use just one. Use tons of them in very small increments. Same in general with processing.

Also the fb post :

  Quote

I wanted to design a musical space where I could playback and remix my favourite album tracks, and also create some off the cuff improvisations that I feel are an enhancing and flirtatious musical counterpoint to the universe of Death Peak.

Going back to the material has made me pick apart some of the sequences and made realise what I value most in music.

I tend to shun the pointlessly intricate in favour of the impressionistic, the visceral. I want to extend the boundary of what's possible in music but not lose sight of the complex, emotional story telling at the heart of it, for me it's these things that give music a long lifespan, you keep coming back to records that pull you in on a level that bypasses rational analysis. I give priority to the most child-like, pure and agile musical phrases I come up with, and tend to poke fun at myself when I get all dry and technical.

Death Peak is a riddle of these most pure and lucid moments, condensed into an enduring and continuous musical wheel. I feel I really closed the circle on this one. But then I would say that. All I can say is that I loved making it. Hope you enjoy it too

 

will you publicly apologise for lying to me about the restaurant

I will never apologise I am the bad news

Fuckin lol