FADER Clark Mix 2014

You never quite know what will turn up in your inbox when you commission a FADER Mix, and that's half the fun. Sometimes it's carefully curated glimpse into an artist's record collection and, occasionally, it's more like a rummage through their brain. UK electronic music artist Clark—who released his debut album on Warp Records in 2001 and is currently gearing up for his seventh, self-titled long-player on the legendary label this November 3rd—is firmly of the latter camp, having created a number of tracks especially for this mix. It kicks off with a windswept, kinda haunting Kanye and Jay Z acapella, rolls through snippets of a David Attenborough documentary about spiders, and includes an untitled modular jam by the man himself. Plus, of course, there's plenty of gold from the likes of Lukid, Surgeon, DJ Godfather, and the late LFO. Listen below, and scroll down to find out what keeps Clark motivated after all these years, and what he thinks of the guy who came up with the genre descriptor IDM.

How did you approach your FADER Mix, and what's on it? All of my favorite things, lots of unreleased bits and bobs of mine, a remix I did of some of my favorite acapellas, mixed with my own music. I wrote quite a lot of fresh material for this. It took ages but I tend to bite off more than I can chew—it's pared down from about 200 mp3 purchases over the last month—if you don't bite off more than you can chew then you never really feel satisfied. I have a huge trash folder now full of the chewed bits that didn't quite work. Damn. But this mix is all of the bits that did. Oh, there is also and a naturalist section in the middle about spiders, it's sort of erotic music for spiders.