Chris Clark has been putting out albums since 2001 when his Clarence Park album was a standout amidst the last gasps of radio-ready “electronica”, an uncommercial and mischievous, yet highly listenable amalgam of glitch and dance beats. The mischief has faded from view as Clark has gotten older, but his skill behind the boards is still as obvious as ever. His weapon of choice on Death Peak is the human voice, and he wields that weapon without ever resorting to a big name guest or a singsong melody. The promotional material for Death Peak finds Clark explaining that the human voice is “the most perfect synth”, and that respect for the voice is all over the album.
Perhaps most impressively, you rarely hear those voices unless you are looking for them. They blend so well with the rest of Clark’s energetic, largely upbeat, cinematic compositions, that they really are just another synth, even as they are the element that sets these pieces apart from those of Clark’s contemporaries.
After a brief and slightly scary intro, “Butterfly Prowler” and “Peak Magnetic” set the mood with high-ish BPM and noises that attack like mosquitos, little high-pitched sounds that dart and bounce and fly all over the beat. The vocals really do come in like synths here, “ahhhhh” sounds that fade in from the background or add texture to the beat, but never announce themselves as vocals. True to his word, Clark is using the voice as just another instrument here, an organic sound amongst the synthetics, and his subtle, ear-pleasing approach is well-presented. The breakdown of “Peak Magnetic” into what sounds like improvised electronic harpsichord is unexpected and frankly rather unpleasant, but for the most part, the album’s first shots are true.
As Death Peak goes on, things scatter a bit. “Hoova” has a late-’80s/early-’90s industrial feel to it, its steady beat and dark staccato synth work hearkening back to that era’s output from Skinny Puppy or Haujobb. Its voices weave through the machinery, helpless and pleading, melodic yet twisted. Album centerpiece “Catastrophe Anthem” is a beautiful slow-burn of a song, the patience for which is rewarded by the most obvious vocal work on the album: a children’s chorus, soaring in its beauty and perfect in its placement. “Catastrophe Anthem” is the track here most suited for a two-minute perspective shot filmed on an ever-widening landscape.
The album closes with “Un U.K.”, which immediately evokes Aphex Twin in its use of nonsense syllables to create melodies and fill out chords over a sparse beat. Once he’s done being cute, Clark turns the track into something approaching the majesty of “Catastrophe Anthem”, synth arpeggios and keyboard melodies layer one by one on top of each other to tremendous, devastating effect, before a noisy breakdown strips them all away again. The ten-minute track finishes with sweeping cirrus-cloud synths and voices to match, a fine and appropriate coda and comedown for a behemoth of a song.
The cover of Death Peak is a crumpled photo of Clark, recognizable but highly obscured. Death Peak is the opening of that crumpled photograph, revealing bit by bit the multifaceted artist that Clark has become. There is very little here that can be described as original, but Clark’s ability to take what he knows and turn it into a series of self-contained, cohesive pieces betrays a sincerity and energy for creation that is easy to celebrate. Death Peak is a very good album, and anyone who’s followed Clark since Clarence Park should be happy with the twists and turns he continues to take.