At 29 tracks deep, this double album from Warp Records stalwart Clark is appropriately named. The first disc, or tracks 1-15 if you’re listening digitally, compile the Feast side of the equation, while disc two (tracks 16-29) unleash the Beast. If that wasn’t daunting enough, it’s a bunch of remixes. Oh, the remix. What was once the ultimate DJ tool-- dancehall heads gifting a track with a new flavor to hook a new audience or disco producers creating extended edit for the dancefloor-- has become the primary currency of the online music world. For the artist, the right remixer means a leg up; a little visibility in a suffocatingly crowded scene. For the website, they provide content. Finally, for the remixer, they are an essential source of income: more reliable than record sales and less overheads than a tour. Clark’s label-mate Aphex Twin called it in typically two-fingers fashion in 2003 with his own remix compilation: 26 Mixes For Cash.
Nothing wrong with that, obviously. People gotta eat. But for all these reasons, remixes-- music as service, as transaction-- often fall through the cracks. It’s not that they can seem half-hearted or sound half-finished (they can) but that original holds so much more weight in a realm obsessed with the real. Which means, more often than not, remixes are here today, gone tomorrow. The internet’s equivalent of lost change down the back of the sofa. But you would hope if you paused to gather them together their value and artistry would become clear.
Happily, that is absolutely the case with Clark’s Feast / Beast, which provides an illuminating opportunity to listen through Clark’s ears; to hear how he hears music. There are patterns and threads to follow that outline the shape of the artist: a passion for percussive grit, a gift for surprise transitions and, underneath it all, that brilliant creeping wit.
Texturally, Clark is all about contrast. That was made clear from day one with his 2001 debut Clarence Park, which veered from glitched out acid to ambient piano loops. On Feast / Beast, his love of contrast manifests in gritty percussion and grimy melodies. His Amon Tobin remix is at once beguiling airy and thick with the scent of wet soil, while he takes Nathan Fake for a clip-clopping ride into satisfyingly spooked out territory. There’s a calamitously carnal re-imagining of HEALTH’s “Die Slow”, with its wild-eyed and slippery instrumentation. Then on his remix of his own track “Alice”, the chimes shine through the grey goo like midnight eyes catching the light. But it is the crunchy footfall of his Rone remix that catches the most. It’s thrilling to hear him work with a hip-hop vocal-- it's a highlight in an exceptional collection-- for there feels an instinctual, almost sensual, understanding of the form’s flow and drama.
Drama could be Clark’s middle name because he loves a surprise transition. His version of Kuedo's “Glow” splits in two like a cleaved piece of fruit: one half purring in an ambient loop, the other sounding a battle cry. There’s the grinding poetry of his Nils Frahm remix, with its organ ploughing through a sea of static, and then-- out of nowhere in the final minute-- a tribal rhythm collapses in on itself like accumulated feedback. His rework of Letherette’s “D&T” takes curves like a racing driver, swerving from sparse digital funk to acid-laced techno, while his take on Aufgang’s “Dulceria” bumbles along in a bleepily hypnotic fashion until the final third when it melts into fizzy-edged sunrise ambience. Then, in scene-stealing style, he sweeps in with an entirely new track-- “Suns Of Temper (Bear Paw Kicks Version)”-- that starts as the kind of electronic funk that Jamie Liddell should be biting before segueing with typical sleight of hand into an epic orchestral techno number.
While liquid emotion is at the heart of what Clark does-- something highlighted by how Bibio sees him on “Absence”, one of the handful of remixes contributed by other artists-- Feast / Beast also bubbles and burns with his sharp humour. His Drvg Cvltvre remix is unreservedly “screw you” in its bombastic barraging, and there’s a playfulness to his pairing of Dave Gahan’s vocal sighs with an elastic acid line on his version of Depeche Mode’s “Freestate”. Best of all, though, is his cheeky intro to his remix of Milanese’s “Mr Bad News”: “Christopher, somebody's on the telephone for you.” “Oh for fuck’s sake. I’m trying to write this fucking tune, man.”
