“Cupidwing” might sound a little like Tycho at the beginning, at least before it’s subducted by one of his famous samples, but that’s less because of influence than because they came out of the same attitude. There’s an added element of nostalgia hearing the Clams sound now and remembering the glorious mid-Obama summer when everyone wanted to go to Coachella, molly was the drug du jour, and Lil B was being booked to lecture at colleges. It’s hard to imagine Pi’erre Bourne’s sun-warmed dreams or Metro Boomin’s gothic castles without the template set by Clams Casino. And he loves low, moaning, unidentifiable samples that seem dredged from a swamp and barely cleaned.

He likes hi-hats, bells, and gongs to give his tracks a sense of metallic weight particularly impressive is opener “Rune,” with its contrast between a huge, dragging cymbal and crisp little trap triplets. His snare sound is one of the most distinctive since Prince’s, more closely resembling a blacksmith hammering a red-hot anvil than the crisp 808s of today’s trap.

Was he cowed by 32 Levels’ lack of success? It’s possible, but good taste doesn’t always trump risk.Ĭlams’ sound is still the bees’ knees. In fact, it’s less substantial than a lot of his tapes, clocking in at 30 minutes, and a few of the tracks start out as ambient interstitials like what techno producers put on their albums in between the dancefloor cuts. It closely resembles the untitled instrumental tapes he’s released throughout this decade. The New Jersey producer’s second album Moon Trip Radio features no guests and is not about pop in the least. It was flawed but striking, hard not to root for, and one of the most interesting pop experiments of the decade. Herring drooling all over “Ghost in a Kiss” or Lil B ludicrously claiming his “ money up to NASA.” Not all of it was so memorable, and not all that was memorable worked, but it deserves comparison with Charli XCX’s Pop 2 in terms of how fiercely it defines its alternate vision of the charts, where any weirdo could be the apple of the world’s eye.

Clams Casino’s 32 Levels was a hell of an album.

Clams casino moon trip radio rym