Chris Clark

Winter in July can be a strange combination. Released in May of 2001, but seeing hype and sales in June and July, Chris Clark's Clarence Park is a frostingly cold glimpse at what winter feels like – even if one listens to it during the dog days of relentless sun. Big reverberated beats transform into a crisp sound experiment, synth washes cut and skate alongside and in between breakbeat scientology, and sound sculpture paints imagery of glacier-like masses floating along in the sea minding their own business. Albeit not sounding especially original, and having an immense amount of pressure to do so, Clark turns in a fine debut of sensitive and cerebrally brash material that sits comfortably alongside some of the better records of 2001.

As signaled by the March 2014 non-album single "Superscope," Chris Clark opted to turn sharply away from the oft-idyllic, sometimes pastoral sound of his 2012 album Iradelphic and its accompanying Fantasm Planes EP. The producer captioned a trailer for this, his seventh Warp album, with "More Berghain than Guggenheim," referencing Berlin's techno nerve center while alluding to his new material's dancefloor appeal. The majority of Clark indeed supplies numerous robust rhythms that are among his most physical and stimulating. At the same time, the producer applies singular touches, from unpredictable changes in course to treated field recordings - including the sound of a chair scraping a factory floor and stomped snow - that help yield the kind of depth and richness that typify so much of his previous output…