Clark - Playground In A Lake

[brian trageskin]

7 am. rimsky-korsakov's flight of the bumblebee wakes me up. i put the kettle on and brush my teeth. the man in the mirror looks deeply troubled. i then take a poop. my mind wanders in the utopian world i've built inside me head, a world where people recognize my true genius. i make toast and play beethoven's 9th on the ipod. patricia stares at me silently. she won't touch her weetabix. she then goes to the bedroom, comes back with her suitcase, kisses me goodbye and leaves the house. she said she would be visiting family in düsseldorf for the next couple weeks. 

i play with the dog in the garden, then i check my emails while sipping matcha. no reply from philip glass or arvo pärt yet. it's been 6 months already. i order new brakes for the wheelchair on amazon, then i go in the studio. i practice my A minor arpeggios on the bösendorfer for half an hour, then half an hour C major. i can tell i've made significant progress lately as i now barely ever play a wrong note. 

to be continued (i'm too slow at this)

[toaoaoad]

4 minutes ago, brian trageskin said:

i practice my A minor arpeggios on the bösendorfer for half an hour, then half an hour C major. i can tell i've made significant progress lately as i now barely ever play a wrong note.

fucking lol 

[YEK]

 

Wait, this is the same guy ? 

[Freak of the week]

back when he joined warp, chris clark wanted warp to release his stuff under an alias "chris clonk", because of the classic 1990 warp ep. however, warp declined because they didn't want to risk any negative associations. so, he had to settle with his real name. if only warp had granted his wish, who knows where he would be now...

Edited April 7, 2021 by Freak of the week

[Soloman Tump]

Chris Gonk

 

 

Edited April 7, 2021 by Soloman Tump

[thumbass]

9 hours ago, yekker said:

 

2 hours ago, Soloman Tump said:

 

 

 

 

These tracks are all so amazing... I am okay with him going in a new direction, he's free to do whatever he wants of course. At least I'm thankful that he has such an amazing back catalogue that I can fall back on when his new releases don't cut it for me. Final verdict on the new album is that it's good, but definetely not something I consider to be more than that. It's fun to return to sometimes but I doubt I'll be listening to it regularly. It's nice revisit every now and then so I bought it on CD anyway.

Edited April 7, 2021 by thumbass

[Joyrex]

18 hours ago, jules said:

Maybe he feels like this direction has legs...

that's really insensitive @jules - better to say he's on a roll

[toaoaoad]

On 4/5/2021 at 5:01 PM, kuniklo said:

I'm surprised at the venom on this thread. 

I had to ask myself why it bothered me so much, and the reason is I just really hate pretension. Tons of artists are pretentious of course, but it bothers me more I guess when it's an artist I originally liked, who showed a lot of promise but has made a series of choices that don't resonate with me (to put it politely). So it's that combo of... not only is he making terrible music but he's also inflating himself as this sort of genius about it. If that was any shit artist I wouldn't care because it happens all the time, but it's disappointing that it's Clark. I guess his music has always come across as a bit pretentious tho. But it just keeps getting worse and worse. 

[X4creek]

Maybe a bit off topic but where should I start with this guy? I was thinking about this but after reading this thread maybe not....

[kuniklo]

2 hours ago, toaoaoad said:

I had to ask myself why it bothered me so much, and the reason is I just really hate pretension. Tons of artists are pretentious of course, but it bothers me more I guess when it's an artist I originally liked, who showed a lot of promise but has made a series of choices that don't resonate with me (to put it politely). So it's that combo of... not only is he making terrible music but he's also inflating himself as this sort of genius about it. If that was any shit artist I wouldn't care because it happens all the time, but it's disappointing that it's Clark. I guess his music has always come across as a bit pretentious tho. But it just keeps getting worse and worse. 

What is it that strikes you as pretentious? The music itself or what he's said about it in interviews?

I've been a Clark fan since the beginning although I like some of his records much better than others. Classical music also makes up about half of my music listening time for the last 20 years. Most of the attempts I've heard to fuse classical and electronic music fall pretty flat in my opinion but he's succeeded better than most on this new album. And if it gets some techno heads to listen to Brahms all the better.

[o00o]

I really wonder if he is taking some sorts of psycho pharmaceuticals that alter the way he can reflect on his own emotions in his work

[toaoaoad]

On 4/10/2021 at 4:44 PM, kuniklo said:

What is it that strikes you as pretentious? The music itself or what he's said about it in interviews?

In this case mostly the interview stuff yeah.

Overall, it's harder to explain in words  I'm trying but I guess in the end it's all subjective. Just an impression I get. I would say "he takes himself too seriously" but there's nothing inherently wrong with that, and that's not quite it either. How can I put my finger on it? It's all just a bit precious. 

[Hugh Mughnus]

1 hour ago, toaoaoad said:

In this case mostly the interview stuff yeah.

Overall, it's harder to explain in words  I'm trying but I guess in the end it's all subjective. Just an impression I get. I would say "he takes himself too seriously" but there's nothing inherently wrong with that, and that's not quite it either. How can I put my finger on it? It's all just a bit precious. 

This is my perception of OPN in a nutshell.

[Freak of the week]

On 4/10/2021 at 10:52 PM, toaoaoad said:

who showed a lot of promise

flol

[X4creek]

2 minutes ago, Brian Dance said:

stop around 2010

I never like stopping when it comes to artist discographies. But thanks still!

[mcbpete]

12 minutes ago, X4creek said:

I never like stopping when it comes to artist discographies. But thanks still!

Pretend the ones that are named just Clark (as opposed to Chris Clark) are a different artist and you'll be fine (though to be fair I loved the Throttle 'trilogy' too)

[X4creek]

29 minutes ago, Brian Dance said:

That's fair enough, just trying to point you towards the best music. He seemed to lose his passion for the type of music he made his name with around 2010 and has drifted further and further into wishy washy semi classical territory.

Developing artistically and trying new things is great but it's much harder to make something exciting and worth listening to in styles with hundreds of years development than ones with a few decades. Learning notation doesn't make you Debussy and I think people would be much more sympathetic to Clark's endeavours if he showed more humility.

ah ok I understand

 

though tbh I heard pretty good things about Death Peak (I know that's not what you meant by "wishy washy semi classical territory" but yeah)

[toaoaoad]

9 hours ago, Freak of the week said:

flol

I don't get why that was funny? 

6 hours ago, Brian Dance said:

Learning notation doesn't make you Debussy and I think people would be much more sympathetic to Clark's endeavours if he showed more humility.

[jules]

7 hours ago, Brian Dance said:

I'd listen chronologically and stop around 2010 (there's some good stuff beyond that but it became a case of severely diminishing returns imho).

Clarence Park (2001)
Ceramics Is The Bomb EP (2001)
Empty the Bones of You (2003)
Body Riddle (2006)
Throttle Furniture EP (2006)
Throttle Clarence EP (2006)
Throttle Promoter EP (2007)
Turning Dragon (2008)
Totems Flare (2009)

Don't forget Feast/Beast. There is a lot of real quality material on there.

[Hugh Mughnus]

16 minutes ago, jules said:

Don't forget Feast/Beast. There is a lot of real quality material on there.

+1!

One of his best imo. 

[kuniklo]

11 hours ago, Brian Dance said:

 Learning notation doesn't make you Debussy and I think people would be much more sympathetic to Clark's endeavours if he showed more humility.

It seems like learning notation is considered inherently pretentious somehow in this thread. I didn't get the impression from his interview he was trying to put himself on the level of the classical masters with that claim.

The problem with a lot of classical music genre hybrids is that people borrow the surface qualities of classical music without any of the richer harmonic & melodic development that makes the best classical music so enduring. Clark doesn't do much better than the others on this record but I'd still rather see him try something new than crank out yet another spin on his older IDM sound. I like that stuff but he's done plenty of that for those that want it.

[toaoaoad]

19 minutes ago, kuniklo said:

It seems like learning notation is considered inherently pretentious somehow in this thread. 

Learning notation isn't pretentious, in fact I highly encourage anyone who makes music to do it. What's pretentious is saying "I taught myself how to read and write sheet music" lol and the other cringey things he's said on the subject. 

[brian trageskin]

i've listened to the album a few times on youtube, it's not that bad actually. that's not to say i particularly enjoyed it but compared to what he usually does, it's ok imo. he should continue on this path imo. 

anyway i noticed right away that the album relied heavily on a limited set of moves, and i started roughly analyzing the tunes for fun and ended up writing down the tonality and key changes of each tune.

quick disclaimer: don't expect super accuracy or exhaustiveness. i didn't bother trying to analyze when i wasn't sure and i only skipped through the tunes, so my analysis might be wrong, as i might have missed a few things that contradict my conclusions. also, keep in mind i'm not that good at music theory, so there might be a few mistakes. anyway here's my rough analysis of the tonalities and key changes on the album - which might as well be titled "i've just discovered the dorian mode and i don't like key changes all that much":

1 (1st tune) - C3/4# dorian (C3/4# means the quarter tone between C# and D - this isn't the official notation for microtones but i can't be bothered using it) - no key change 

2 - Eb dorian - no key change

3 - Bb minor - no key change 

4 - this one is trickier - A minor/C major (depending on how you analyze it) - then G minor - Bb minor/Db major - G# minor - Eb major - G# minor 

5 - C3/4# dorian - no key change 

6 - C3/4# dorian again - same thing 

7 - F# minor - same 

8 - this one i had fun analyzing - C# altered - F# dorian - F locrian/G# dorian (depending on how you analyze it) - E locrian/G dorian - F major 

9 - D dorian - no key change 

10 - A dorian at the beginning - C minor for the rest of the tune 

11 - A1/2# minor(quarter tone between A and A#) - no key change 

12 - E1/2b (between E and Eb) - not sure about this one, all i can say is it's a pedal point (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedal_point) 

13 - C# minor - a few brief modulations i couldn't be bothered analyzing - F# minor 

14 - the tune with the most complex harmony on the album - no clear tonal center during the 1st half as it modulates constantly - some pedal point on C - C minor at the end

15 - C minor - no key change

16 - C minor - same 

as you may have noticed by now, heavy use of dorian (and minor to a lesser extent), many tunes with 0 modulation. the tunes i like the most are those that modulate the most (unsurprisingly), except for tune 5, whose 1st half is my favourite thing on the album (hate the 2nd half though).

i might come back to this at some point to correct the mistakes i may have made, or to complete missing info. 

 

 

 

 

[o00o]

That’s very interesting- did notice a difference to his older releases like body riddle or empty  the bones of you in terms of harmonic structure?

 

Could you do this song by song key analysis  with said records? 

[o00o]

(Don’t want to bother but the is one of the most interesting takes on this topic as it’s finally adding some meat to the discussion and makes me wonder if it’s the synthesis that changed or if he did something on the harmonic side in comparison to older releases)