When the announcement hit last fall that David Bowie had recorded the theme to a British crime serial called The Last Panthers, a smaller piece of news got drowned out in the hubbub*:* Chris Clark, aka Clark of Warp Records, was tasked with composing the sound and music for the show itself. It was a surprising connection to many, but becomes perhaps less so when you realize that The Last Panthers show is produced by Warp Films, a burgeoning offshoot of the venerated electronic label. As they did with Broadcast for the studio’s indie horror film Berberian Sound Studio, Warp have decided to release Clark's work as a standalone effort.
It’s worth noting that Clark and Warp have chosen to present The Last Panthers as another chapter in Clark’s discography rather than as an "Original Soundtrack" or a "Music From..." Clark's catalog is deep and well-respected, and The Last Panthers is kind of a curious entry. It presents itself with two separate tests to pass: 1) Is it an effective soundtrack to a show? 2) Does it stand up on its own, without visual context?
To the first question, the answer is a resounding yes (U.S. viewers will get the chance to judge for themselves later this year, when the show is released Stateside). The dark, rain-soaked impressionism of the cinematography, coupled with the quiet, low-key dialogue, spoken in a variety of languages, creates a cold, gray and glassy world which the viewer feels they can observe at a distance but never penetrate. Clark’s work plays as much of a role in shaping this world as the visuals, making his cues not just appropriate but intrinsic to the show.
Answering the second question, how well The Last Panthers stands on its own, is a bit trickier. Clark has always been a stylistically varied artist, working in a range of tempos and textures, but The Last Panthers is most notable for the total absence of the faster, louder numbers, or the incredible low-end beats for which he is known, like 2003’s "Early Moss" or "Banjo" from 2014's Clark. He’s basically constructed an entire record of miniatures like "Ship is Flooding" and "Strength Through Fragility" (both also from Clark), or "Pleen 1930s" (the first track from his very first record in 2001)--tracks that typically ran short on his records and often felt more like interludes than compositions.
Coincidentally or not, many pieces feel reminiscent of the spindly instrumentals populating the back halves of Bowie's Heroes and Low. "Panther Bass Plock" and "Chloroform Sauna" practically channel "Neuköln" from Heroes at the altar, particularly the low-end sea burbles underneath the rising synths. Tim Hecker is evoked throughout, especially with the gently ebbing waves of "Upward Evaporation," while "Serbian Daffodil"’s warbling reverb-heavy synths recall Boards of Canada interludes and "Omni Vignette" is Erik Satie by way of Drukqs-era Aphex’s plaintive sustained piano.
But "sounds likes…" aside, what is most impressive about The Last Panthers is the way in which Clark has taken all of this incidental music and shaped it into a flowing 48-minute suite that conjures almost as much of an imagined visual story as The Last Panthers show itself. Due to the subdued nature of the proceedings along with short track times and a smattering of dreamily repeated theme refrains throughout, the listening experience doesn’t lend itself to tracks standing out on their own. Exceptions, however, are the awesomely titled "Strangled to Death in a Public Toilet," with its beautiful dead-angel chorus reminiscent of Gavin Bryar’s "The Sinking of the Titanic"; "Diamonds Aren’t Forever" and it's follow-up "II," which both break down midway through fogs of noisy synth to reveal plaintive repeated piano and violin; and album closer "Hide On the Treads 3", whose ascending and pumping glockenspiel arpeggios provide the closest thing to sunshine on this otherwise completely gray sound collage. It's been suggested before that Clark is writing the soundtrack to the end of the world; if so, The Last Panthers feels like the lonely soundtrack for whatever's left after that.
