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The Clarinette Anti Cassette Act Of 2012

by Clarinette

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about

"The Clarinette Anti-Cassette Act Of 2012" set was released in an edition of 50 CD-R's and 16 deluxe cassette packs each with a 90 minute cassette in a small cassette recorded wrapped in a colored vinyl LP formed to act as a stand for the recorder. The two tracks were recorded to fill (or nearly fill) the two sides of the 90 minute cassette house in the deluxe pack (so they are both really long tracks). The recordings are fundamentally recorded live at home with "A Reflective Kind Of Tension" inserting some snippets of late 70's and early 80's recordings from the artists bands during that era.

Aquarius said of The Clarinette Anti-Cassette Act Of 2012 upon release:

We always just assumed Clarinette was from New Zealand, probably because our first exposure to this one man soundscaper was via Campbell Kneale's Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label (although before that he had released an lp on Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace label) but in fact the man behind Clarinette, aka Dan Vallor, comes from right here in the Bay Area. The sound of Clarinette might throw you off as well, as Vallor takes gorgeous layered drifts of mutated field recordings, deftly processed loops and all manner of noise making devices and weaves them into something darkly expansive and hauntingly mysterious. This awesomely titled double cd-r / cassette offers up two sprawling sidelong tracks, the first, uses as its focus, what sound like a field recording of a train (much like the recent Chris Watson record El Tren Fantasma), but here the chugging of the train is blurred and smeared and looped into a blackened expanse of rhythmic thrum, over which foghorn tones moan and bellow, those tones constantly shifting and mutating, occasionally coalescing into almost-melodies, but just as often keening mournfully and then fading out. The whole side is based on this chugging softly churning mesmer, but throughout, Vallor introduces all manner of sonic subtleties, whether it's some krautrock like motorik drumming, some wah-wah-ed chordal swirls or some blackened soft focus shimmers, the whole track remains at a constant low level thrum, sans headphones it's a soothing washed out drone, but closer listening reveals a depth to Vallor's sonic construction that is quite breathtaking.

The second disc/side is much more abstract, with Vallor moving deftly through various drone permutations, starting out with a dense squall of hissing swirl, the sound soon shifts to dizzying echoey shimmer, and then more looped mesmer, the timbre changing in many cases more than the actual sound, slipping from caustic and crunchy, to muddy and murky, to glistening and shimmery, to dense and droney, the noisier parts rife with a sort of unhinged psychedelia, while the quieter parts darkly contemplative, a hushed blurred drift, that more often than not slowly blossoms into something much more intense. The whole track constantly seesawing between the two polarities, dragging the listener along on a harrowing hypnotic sonic journey, that again, benefits greatly from headphones, Vallor's sound world deep and dense and well worth getting lost in.

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released March 9, 2012

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Clarinette Edinburgh, UK

Clarinette began making tapes for broadcast on KPFA's "Assassinatin' Rhythm" in the mid-80's, in time the project went dormant until some tapes were found in 1999. One of those tapes made it to Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore who asked to release an LP. Tapes from those early years along with newly recorded material were released in 2002 as Haze. Clarinette has been an active recording project since. ... more

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