Anyone expecting the eclectic, hard-techno aspect of CHRIS CLARK'S debut mini-LP "Clarence Park" (2001) will get something of a shock when coming into contact with "Empty The Bones Of You" as it concentrates almost exclusively on his downbeat side and presents a series of low-key moods and likeably squiffy electronica that takes you to some very private, inward-looking places indeed.
Whether this will expand Clark's fanbase is at best debatable, but "Empty The Bones Of You" is very much an obsessive's record, with attention to the smallest details paramount, and while Clark has himself admitted "these are the last melodic tracks I will ever make", one hopes he won't stick too rigidly to such statements, as there are some attractively fragile set-pieces here.
Opener "Indigo Optimius" sets the tone, mixing and matching dreamy electronica with lugubrious beats and warm, squelchy analogue excursions. It's soon bettered, too: not least by "Holiday As Brutality" (langourous ambienta pitted against clod-hopping beats, almost psychedelic in execution); "Tycan" (strident beats, warped sunburst vocal sample, mini-explosions of sound) and "Early Moss" which was allegedly finished off on a sunny spring day in Brighton, but to these ears sounds locked into the strangest of nocturnal worlds.
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Of course, however brave the project, anything adhering so tightly to ambient minimalism can veer dangerously close to the Emperor's New Clothes and - perhaps inevitably - "Empty The Bones Of You" does come unstuck. "Wolf", for example, is little more than a no-trick pony, although the manic, neo-classical piano towards its' fade launches an odd rescue mission, while however much attention is given to its' tiny details, "Slow Spines" goes nowhere very slowly and uneventfully indeed. Weirdly, though, "Tyre" (car noises fade in and out against droplets of stark piano) then proceeds to demolish this premise, working wonders in its' less-is-more approach.
Sparse and sometimes deliberately left half-finished, "Empty The Bones Of You" is a courageous record and probably not the one Clark's admirers had expected. Where he will go from these downbeat mood exercises and jarry beats is anyone's guess, but if this is really the end of the line for Clark's "melodic" tracks, then it's a suitably diverting epitaph at the very least.
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