Album Review

Clara Moto – ‘Joy Departed’ EP

• 26th Aug 2013

There isn’t much time to form opinions when an email drops into your inbox on a Wednesday afternoon, the main gist of it being ‘hey, would love your opinion on this new EP’.

So far, so normal.

‘Oh yeah, it came out this week’.

So what you are treated to here is a breakneck review based on a couple of spins of what is thankfully an EP of music that I liked on the first listen.

I download the files, open the zip and bung it into itunes before being enveloped by a sonic experience that roughly equates to a spinning head in a dark room after too many whiskies, whilst being serenaded by Burial. To be absolutely honest, it is quite an unsettling listen… with haunted beats and clipped voices that pass through like echoes of a nightmare, this sounds like lounge music for a club full of movie maniacs, Freddie Kreuger, Jason Vorhees and Michael Myers all clinking their glasses of Bloody Marys and discussing their fondness of Twin Peaks.

Whilst all of the above may not sound overwhelmingly positive, I find a discovery like this to be rather thrilling, taking the chillwave template and subverting it, creating something wholly original from the key touchstones of The XX and Burial and taking them down darker routes, indeed, just consider
the cover version of Chris Issack’s already chilling Wicked Game that is now a rather terrifying prospect.

For The Love We Lost is a swooning atmospheric piece, providing breathing space before 6 minute plus closer Shade, that puts the bass back into ‘basic four to the floor beat’, neither of these matching the horrifying opening triumvirate for brooding terror filled genius and the darker aspects that delighted me.

Two listens within 24 hours, a quick turn around on a review, and now the whole world can read my hastily assembled assessment on exactly how I feel about the music of Clara Moto.

Venue: ‘Joy Departed’ EP
Support Band: InFine Records