RA.823 Clark by Resident Advisor

Chris Clark's music is hard to describe, but if you wanted to explain it to an electronic music fan, you might use the dreaded term "IDM" to encompass the many strange and alluring records, some frantic, some chill, the UK producer has put out through Warp over the years. We can be a bit more specific: he uses field recordings, out-there drum patterns and all kinds of hardware (seriously, there's a lot) to make make meticulously processed music, some of which you can dance to. Lately, though, he's turned his attention to classical music, scoring films and televisions shows and culminating in last year's Playground In A Lake for vaunted label Deutsche Grammophon, which featured guests like AFRODEUTSCHE and Oliver Coates and a member of Grizzly bear on a moving, string and horns-led suite about climate change.

You hear all these ideas at once on Clark's stirring RA Podcast, which features music, as he explains, from 1922 all the way to 2022. Classical rubs elbows with Burial and Ricardo Villalobos, as once familiar tracks melt into new (mis)shapes. It also features plenty of Clark originals—maybe some glimpsse of the new album? The best part isn't even the formidable selections, but the way he puts it altogether. Far from a seamless DJ mix, this one is full of peaks and valleys and clever transitions that'll make you check the tracklist and wonder what you just heard. It's the kind of all-over-the-place mix that captures the brilliance of Clark's in a DJ format. Maybe he should do this more often.

Read more: https://ra.co/podcast/823