Mar 01, 2023
By Mark Redfern
Photography by David Ellis
British electronic musician and producer Clark (full name Chris Clark) is releasing a new album, Sus Dog, that’s been produced by Thom Yorke, on May 26 via Throttle. Now he has shared its second single, “Clutch Pearlers,” via a music video. Dylan Hayes directed the video. Watch it below.
A press release describes the song in more detail: “Set to a bright carefree ditty with Reich-ian tuned mallets, ‘Clutch Pearlers’ deals with social awkwardness and insecurity, but, as with much of the record, definitely isn’t earnest; more sideways, with a self-awareness and self-deprecation ensuring things never descend into the air violin sin bin.”
Previously Clark shared the album’s first single, “Town Crank,” which was one of our Songs of the Week.
Yorke had this to say about the collaboration in a previous press release: “Chris wrote me to say he’d started singing, looking for feedback/advice or whatever, cuz it was kind of new shark-infested waters for him. I’ve been into what he does for years, and I ended up being a kind of backseat driver as he pieced all the oddness of it together, which was fascinating…. I wasn’t surprised to discover he came at singing and words through another door completely, which to me was the most interesting and exciting part. The first thing he sent me was him singing about being stuck between two floors and I was already sold. To me the way he approached it all wasn’t the usual singer/songwriter guff thank god; it mirrored the way he approached all his composition and recording, but this time it had a human face. His face.”
Clark said that his thought process when making Sus Dog was: “What would it sound like if The Beach Boys took MDMA and made a rave record?”
He also added: “It’s a lifetime’s worth of listening to songs and working out how to make them, tuning into how to customise all the other elements to my tastes. It feels like my debut, in a way.”
In 2022, Clark remixed Mitski’s “Love Me More” (from her latest album, Laurel Hell).