Just in...Clock Opera: Ways to Forget (deluxe version)

    Most of the tracks from London based Clock Opera's debut album, Ways to Forget, on Moshi Moshi and Island UK Records, are not new to me--many have been released slowly over the past couple years as singles or streamed on various websites attributed to Clock Opera (i.e. their MySpace or Facebook pages). But, with the April 20th release of the 18 track deluxe version (original is 10), there is a whole bunch of songs I have only just been able to explore; which is actually quite a surprise, because I did not even know about a deluxe version. Also a surprise, is how accessible Clock Opera has made listening to the new album. There is a whole Clock Opera YouTube page, with dedicated videos (a few made into videos, others just audio) to every single song. I have compiled a playlist in the order of the CD release, so you can better enjoy them. You can listen to that here. Some of the uploads have an unreasonable amount of blank time at the end, I don't know why, so you have to wait between songs or just go to the next one manually.
    I have done a much better job discovering what genre of Pop/Electronica Clock Opera fits into since my last post concerning their single Belongings/Let Go the Lifeboats. Then I labeled them solely as Indie Pop and Electronica. Now, after reading a really interesting write up on their Facebook, in the 'About' section, I have learned much more about what they are generally striving for and how they loosely describe themselves--because no band simply wants to fix themselves into a corner with a slapped on genre. To cite an excerpt: "[Clock Opera] once in passing defined themselves as making “chop pop”, but it is perhaps best if that is not how they are actually described. Chop pop or popchop as much as it might crudely describe the music of a group who use fragmented and splintered samples, glowing edits, colliding rhythms, forgotten dreams, digital collage, disintegrating intervals, merging tenses and cut up words as part of their compositional technique does not do justice to their enriched cohesive hybrid of minimalist attack, lush drones, linear transitions and repeated phrases mixed with seemingly random sequences of riffs. Indie-tronic is also useful as a vague wiki guide but severely underestimates their nuanced sensationalism and their cracking knowledge of prog rock and psych hop, Philip Glass and David Lynch, ambient acid and ghost rock, crystal vibrations and blissed out bells, spilling melodies and rhapsodic textures." Read the rest of this interesting biography of sorts here. There is a substantial amount of cool information about the derivation of their name, influences, how they view themselves in the midst of a world of music that too often permits the notion that creativity is lost and there is nothing new to be made.
    A short description of their sound would have to include Clock Opera's affinity for systems music, as their influences suggest. Systems music is minimalist music which basically, according to Wikipedia, is "the work of composers who concern themselves primarily with sound continuums which evolve gradually, often over very long periods of time". Overall, Clock Opera's music does not start with just a little and gradually increase instrumentation as much as minimalist music often does, but it includes very basic instrumentation, multiple pianos a lot of the time, or electronic sounds that are cut together in such a way that they create more complicated rhythms and textures. It is melodic and driven. In fact, mostly their music is upbeat and could be played in a dance house, though may not mix quite as well, because of the many layers. I get the feeling that Clock Opera wants each song to sound the way it does, making it sort of musique concrète, so to mix it would be taking away sounds from it more than adding as mixing often accomplishes. Also, the singer, Guy Connelly, has a nice distinct timbre to his voice, and uses his falsetto effectively up higher in his range.
    A full track listing is available here on iTunes. Again my YouTube playlist is here. I have linked the song "Lesson No. 7", which was a single, over under the 'Monthy Sample Tracks' as well. Enjoy!