Clark has announced a new album. The playground in a lake will be available on March 26th from Deutsche Grammophon. The album contains string ensembles, Oliver Coates playing the cello and Chris Taylor of Grizzly Bear on clarinet. Listen to the new song “Small” below.
“I’ve always wanted to record strings, but I feel like there is this baggage of classical music,” said Clark in a statement about the new album. “Although I have taught myself how to read and write music, I am not putting this genre or any other genre on a silver platter. I don’t come from an institutionalized contingent that considers a narrow range of instruments to be “the real stuff” and everything else to be worthless commercial pop. I take what I admire from this world and then move on. I just use it as a different color. “He continued:
So I started thinking about my favorite string arrangements, like Scott Walker records, where they exist among contrasting elements. Then I started approaching the album from a dark folk place, also with that heavy ’70s synth style. Then came the improvisation of Musique Concrète and some of my favorite obsessions with modern classical and sound design, and then it clicked.
Read more about Clark in Pitchfork’s “50 Best IDM Albums of All Time” list.
