Clarence Clarity - Meadow Hopping, Traffic Stopping, Death Splash

If you’ve been following Clarence Clarity from his earliest releases such as The Gospel Truth and 4GODSLUV (or even before that in other earlier incarnations) through to more recent offerings such as Bloodbarf, you’ll probably be starting to get a sense of what he’s doing by now. We’re still trying to capture it in just a few words, but there's such a melee of sounds it's pretty complex. “Electronic circus freak zone,” was our very first attempt on our introducing post back in 2013 and that still seems reasonably accurate, although maybe we’d add in the words mangled, warped and funked to describe the music of this strange scientist of sound.

Anyway, however we define the noise he makes, Meadow Hopping, Traffic Stopping, Death Splash is more of it. “Hollywood at the witchhouse with reptiles and the catholics,” he chants meaningfully, even though we have no idea what he's on about. But then does all art have to have meaning? Can’t it just sound (or look) good?

Clarence Clarity unleashes himself live this year as he goes out on tour supporting Jungle. For what is essentially a very studio based sound, it will be fascinating to see if he can pull it off live. Keep an eye on our Twitter feed as we’ll be letting you know the answer to that question at the first date of that tour in Breaking More Waves home city of Portsmouth. Clarence Clarity’s album No Now (which is rumoured to go the whole shebang at 20 tracks long) is released in March.

Clarence Clarity - Meadow Hopping, Traffic Stopping, Death Splash

12 From '14 - Some Of The Best Songs On Breaking More Waves This Year

We’re getting ready to say goodbye to another year and here at Breaking More Waves it’s been a very successful one. 

How do we define this success? In three simple ways:

1. We’re still doing what we do. That might not sound a particularly impressive statement, but to continue to keep Breaking More Waves running, this year posting nearly 50 more times than any previous year and hitting over 500 posts in total, against the pressures of a demanding full time job and family is success in itself. 

2. To still get huge pleasure and enjoyment out of doing what we do.

3. Having cheekily asked on Twitter if anyone would be prepared to pay to read our blog posts and getting a few positive answers, in January of this year, alongside another music blogger Adam from Alphabet Bands we put this to the test and participated in a non-stop 24 hour Blogathon to raise money for Cancer Research asking readers (as well as friends and family) to sponsor us. We were stunned by the reaction from readers and their generosity, eventually raising just over £1,500 between the 2 blogs in the 24 hour period. Receiving £50 donations from complete strangers who were reading our posts was an incredibly humbling experience and without doubt the best and most valueable thing we have ever done in Breaking More Waves 6 and a half year history. 

Goodbye 2014.

We’re closing our year by featuring 12 of our favourite songs we've featured this year, each one in video form. For once, we 're providing no commentary on the individual tracks, we think we've said all we want to say for one year.

This isn’t a definitive list as we’ve chosen 1 song from each month, meaning that on really good months a number of great songs have had to be sacrificed and some songs that we adore haven’t made the cut as they never had a video. We've also chosen 12 different artists.

See you in 2015.

January

Låpsley - Station



February

Indiana - Solo Dancing



March

Jungle - Busy Earnin'



April

Zella Day - Sweet Ophelia



May

La Roux - Let Me Down Gently



June

Broods - Mother & Father



July

Laura Doggett - Phoenix



August

Charli XCX - Break The Rules



September

Seinabo Sey - Pistols At Dawn



October

Clarence Clarity - Those Who Can't Cheat



November

IYES - Glow



December

Young Fathers - Get Up

Clarence Clarity - Those Who Can't, Cheat

If you’ve been paying attention, read the clues and used Google properly you’ll already know who Clarence Clarity, this new entrepreneur of bubblegunk, is. Once you’ve got that out of the way you can concentrate on the important stuff, like listening to this bat shit mental tune which manages to pack a whole bunch of oddball activity into its four minutes and five seconds of existence. If you’re the sort of person that likes hip grinding funk, Bhangra workouts, demons inside in your head and electrical noise that sounds like someone has just discovered the meaning of life (and really deep down inside everyone wants to hear those four things don’t they?) then Those Who Can’t, Cheat is for you. 

Yet despite its warped brilliance 'Clarence' looks pretty normal doesn't he? 

It’s out on December 1st via Bella Union. The universe unfolds….

Clarence Clarity - Those Who Can't, Cheat

Clarence Clarity - Alive In The Septic Tank (Video)

In an alternative universe where pop music is weirdly exotic, experimental and ever so slightly dirty and screwy, Clarence Clarity is number 1 in the charts. This mystery producer / singer / band / thing (delete as appropriate – we really have no idea) released his / her / their /its debut EP Save †Hyself this week. It might be a one off before Clarence disappears never to be heard of again or it just might be the start of something bigger and potentially incredible. Either way Save †Hyself is ridiculously warped, brilliant and out there. It’s pop music for the f*cked up, insane, odd and those of us who want music to do deranged things now and then. Alive In The Septic Tank, taken from the EP achieves that level of madness and then some.

So who is Clarence Clarity ? According to Noisey who premiered the new freaky video for Alive In The Septic Tank yesterday (and we're following today), “keen eared audio entrepreneurs, those who inject themselves with forward-thinking music like jetsetting Mother's digest Elle, should be able to distinguish the guy behind these vocals instantaneously.” We're obviously not that keen eared because we’re clueless. Somebody just tell us who it is please so that we can all just get on and enjoy the music.

Clarence Clarity - Alive In The Septic Tank (Video)

Clarence Clarity - New Waves

Welcome to the weird electronic circus freak zone of Clarence Clarity, a producer (at least we assume it’s one person) who seems to be named after that meme (click here if you don’t know what we’re talking about) and appears to be big on religion referencing titles. 

Despite some google detective work we know very little about Mr Clarity. Here’s what we do know…

1. He released his debut track 4GODSLUV late last year to the internet – an intense, lurching piece of sample based electronica that made us wonder if Jai Paul had got a bit dirty whilst acting under a different name.

2. Earlier this month a further track followed. The Gospel Truth is even odder than 4GODSLUV. Yet underneath the disturbing child-like cartoon vocals, gnarly noise, lead heavy bass and video game effects there’s a hooky pop chorus waiting to be discovered. This is probably very wrong to admit but we can imagine doing some very sexy dancing to this track.

3. Put the two tracks together and what you have is something unnaturally brilliant, messily inventive and likely to make your parents shake their heads in disdain and mutter ‘that’s not music’. If they do, just remember; THEY KNOW NOTHING AND ARE WRONG. It’s their job as parents to be so.

4. We have no idea who Clarence Clarity is, but we really don’t care when he’s banging out bubblegunk tunes like this.

5. The video for The Gospel Truth (here) continues the attempts to queer you out; lip-synching skulls, NSFW boobs, distorted family portraits and gun toting masked Halloween scaries all feature. Its low budget appearance displays a wealth of imagination.

The debut EP, entitled Save †Hyself (more religious titling) will be released through 37 Adventures on September 17th and will feature 4 tracks, The Wow (which is just over a minute long), Alive In The Septic Tank, The Crux and The Gospel Truth (streaming below). Pre-order it here.

Clarence Clarity - The Gospel Truth

Clarence Clarity - 4GODSLUV (Video)