Clark - Totems Flare

Clark’s third album follows a similar path to recent glitch-hop pioneers such as Mark Pritchard’s Harmonic 313 and rising Glaswegian star Hudson Mohawke. It’s a sour and darkly experimental mash of hip-hop, dubstep, ambient and wonky electronica, all propped up by a frighteningly heavy low end. This makes for challenging listening, particularly when coupled with the scattershot beats of Totem Crackerjack or the impenetrable doom of Suns of Temper. Rainbow Voodoo features a fast, half-rapped vocal which sounds like a Mighty Boosh crimp. Keeping with the Noel Fielding theme, much of the album could have been made by Jones, Fielding’s keyboard-wielding sound terrorist in Nathan Barley. The standout is Look Into The Heart Now, a more accessible, fuzzy electro number with a Detroit-style loop dipping over the top. For the uninitiated, more of this might have been quite nice, but I’m sure Clark never said it was going to be an easy listen.