At 18 mintues, Clams Casino's Rainforest EP hardly qualifies as an album, but after spending a few weeks with the hip-hop producer's smothering instrumentals, it's certainly deserving of some spotlight attention, though you've probably heard the story by now.
Clams Casino, otherwise known on Twitter as Clammy Clams, is Mike Volpe, a New Jersey native who first got heaps of attention producing for rap's prolific "based" rapper, Lil B. While his production duties made the newcomer a star in some circles, Clammy didn't become a household name on the blogosphere until releasing his own instrumental mixtape last year.
When that tape dropped, the shoegaze beauty of songs like "Motivation" or "I'm God" were on full display and sounded even better without the idiosyncratic hip-hop freestyles. Unlike most producers, whose instrumentals are symbiotes to the talent they back, Clams Casino's tracks stood even taller on their own two feet. That, in part, explains the release of Rainforest, five cuts of brand-new, purposefully instrumental content.
It's quite an accomplishment that, in little over a year, Clams has become somewhat an autuer. After hearing "Motivation" a couple of times, it's easily to herald all the tracks on Rainforest as Clams Casino tunes. Even his latest release, "Wizard" for the Adult Swim Singles Program, bears several staple trademarks.
What you get with nearly every Clammy production is relatively straightforward: overblown bass, ghostly synths, tons of quarter-note high hat and economic use of abstract vocal samples. For better or worse, nothing Clams does on Rainforest is new, really. He uses the same production techniques and flourishes that make so many of his hip-hop instrumentals work, but hardly experiments. For a full-length LP, this might be frustrating, but for a quick EP, the results scratch all the right spots on a listener's ears.
If Clams Casino is going to rival any potential contemporaries, say Four Tet, his sonic palet is going to have the expand tremendously--he hasn't quite mastered the solitary electronic song and still seems to produce with rappers in mind. For a first batch of songs created specifically to be heard on their own though, Rainforest shows a hell of a lot of promise and just might be one of the finest EP releases of the year...
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Clams Casino - Rainforest EP
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Clams Casino - Motivation (Instrumental)
Clams Casino - I'm God (Instrumental)
Clams Casino - Wizard
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