Clark

I’ve been on a great streak lately, but Clark’s “Totem Flare” is a full blown speaker monster in the best possible way, Gigantic bass that hits like a semi, dirty, fuzzed up keyboards.. echo, chanted non-lyrics and as a result, made one of the hardest, loudest and best dance records of the year. I can’t give my exact thoughts on this quite yet.. But I can tell you this, if this isn’t on my year-end list, it’ll have been one of the best years for music in a very long time.

 Points

 Let’s talk about the elephant on the record, ‘Rainbow Voodoo’, I haven’t heard anything that’s hit me this instantly in a long time, song of the year? With it’s combination of dirty synths, headphone shaking bass and just generally tight pattern and strange vocal chant, there’s no way it can fail. The track is hard, rock solid.. The bass hits like a truck, the keyboards screech and Clark’s voice echoes over the track.. This one is a monster, I haven’t given it much of a run on my audio-setup, but once reveals it to be as much of a speaker shaker as much as it is a headphone shaker.

 The rest of the album is a mixture of consistent ally great in-between moments for Clark, his sense of balance on each song is quite impressive, he knows where to place bridges, choruses, etc.. And the album is loud in the best way. The sounds fill up the ears and can easily overpower whatever you’re playing it on.

 “Totem Flare” isn’t without it’s bad patches, ‘growls garden’ leans a bit on the weak side of things, and the album does slump a few times.. but “Totem Flare” does so much right it’s hard to really look at the weak spots on the album as flaws really worth mentioning, the bad taste of ‘Growl Garden’ is quickly washed away and all one is left with is delicious spoonfuls of great music.