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Clams Casino, "Rainforest"
Fans of underground hip-hop have been eagerly awaiting a release like this for a while, as Clams' distinctive productions have been the backdrop for several of the more beloved songs by the utterly inscrutable "BasedGod," Lil B. Although he self-released a "mixtape" a while back (just reissued on Type), this EP is his first ever batch of songs conceived solely as stand-alone pieces.  There are some clear similarities to his other work, like sultry and slowed-down R&B samples, but Rainforest also boasts an appealingly woozy shoegaze/hypnagogic pop sensibility.  I don't think this effort quite deserves the comparisons to Tim Hecker or the "hottest producer on the planet" hyperbole he's been receiving recently, but it's still pretty damn good.
The primary idea behind the Clams Casino aesthetic seems to be such a simple one that I am surprised more people have not jumped on it: taking existing pop hooks and warping them into somewhat different pop hooks.  In fact, Casino is kind of the antithesis of "crate-digger" archetype embodied by folks like Madlib, making absolutely no effort to dig up and cannibalize obscure deep cuts that no one else has discovered yet.  Instead, Clams cheerfully borrows from people as ubiquitous as Bjork and Adele.  That absolutely should not work, but Clams (NJ's Michael Volpe) has an amazing ear and devotion to detail.  Also, he is quite inventive.  I guess the lesson here is that a skilled artist can make something his or her own regardless of the materials at hand.
The finest example of his talents on this particular release is the languorously sensual opening piece, "Natural."  The hook is a beautifully slurred and stuttering female vocal snippet that could easily carry the song on its own, but Volpe fills the periphery with all kinds of disorienting and spectral touches like hollow echoes, hisses, backwards instrumentation, and heavy delay that yields a mini-masterpiece of layered pop-savvy melancholia.  It's actually one of my favorite songs of the year thus far, resembling a simplified, shadowy cousin to some of the better recent Four Tet material.
The rest of the songs on the album do not quite hit the same heights, but they still come pretty close (though the Boards of Canada-esque "Treetop" seems like a step in the wrong direction).  Each of the remaining three songs boasts an enticing concoction of ruined and stretched vocals, blurred instrumentation, and spartan head-bobbing beats.  Unfortunately, there is a small catch–they all seem like variations on a very specific template.  Even though this release is under 20 minutes long, it feels like a single idea is being stretched very far.
Also, these pieces are more maximalist than Michael's previous work and sometimes have rock-like crescendos.  I can understand why he made those decisions, as this is the first time his music has had to stand by itself and something needs to fill the void left by the absence of a vocalist, but I don't think he quite got the dynamics right. The best (and most unique) aspects of Clams' work are the ghostly and fragile ones and they need sufficient space to make their full impact–they don't always have it here.  I love the individual parts of this EP: the textures, the hooks, and the subtle hallucinatory touches, but lack of variety prevents me from fully embracing the whole. Volpe is undeniably a formidable and ingenious producer, but his skills as a composer are not quite at the same level yet.  This is well-worth investigating (as is some of his other work), but the surrounding hype is a bit disproportionate for an artist still best appreciated in single-song doses.
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