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The Stimulated Australia

by Spencer Clark

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about

Clark’s metier is to envision fantastic imageries of the other worlds and translate these in tones and images in a very direct and personal fashion. Not necessarily indulged in the world of angels and crystals, yet enjoying himself a demon or two while aestheticizing a beautiful and positive Great Darkness. An artist that is both a dreamer sporting a whiff of naiveté, yet someone who likes to make things difficult and refuses to repeat himself, nor settling for laying back in the fringes of today. To go the whole way, and along this way, at his finger tips revealing little by little a true meaning of his oeuvre. A body of work that is both very playful and deeply serious. With compositions applying a tone scheme and style of keyboard playing that is by now completely his own, “Clark’s Scale”.

This release however reveals possible new meanings of our own world. Driven by simple observation and little interference, the normally sensationalistic world of field recordings becomes a simple vessel for aestheticizing reality. Yet the wave sounds, bird calls, and aquarium background music become a new world through Clark’s ears. Originally intended as a personal study for his recently released “The World Of Shells” LP, and as a sound source for other projects, i however deemed these recordings more than interesting and “content full” enough to release them how they are. Open curtain ...!

These are ambiences from Australian landscapes, recorded by Spencer Clark (Monopoly Child Star Searchers, Typhonian Highlife, The Skaters, et al). Forced by undersigned into the genus of the field recordist. Natural sounds are mirrored to a world of fabricated aquarium music. Where lorikeets and ocean waves serve as a counterpoint for beautiful, light background airs. The recorder cunningly observes a building where the tourist forages, and fascinates the sounds of lands that are forever spiritual to the native. Captured on handheld cassette recorder as both being a study, and a private s(t)imulation. Resulting in a document that is a particular addition to Clark’s catalogue, where the symbolism, the mirth and the mundane forever morph.

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"As you might hope for, or expect, from a Spencer Clark release, the levels of ambiguity are subtle but playfully high on this one. We’d point to the knowing discrepancy between the spelling of the album title, The Stimulated Australia, and the track title The Simulated Australia as a clue; is its 22 minutes of lapping waves, cicadas and piercing lorikeet calls a manufactured fantasia or a real document? Or does it even matter? Likewise with Study For The World Of Shells - are we listening to a room recording of a drifting synth performance layered with location recordings, or simply immersed in a field recording from an aquarium in Belgium with a sweet ambient soundtrack?

We leave those questions for you to answer, and add your own, but either way this is a satisfyingly liminal, detached, and almost voyeuristic listening experience. A barely there but vital addition to Clark’s catalogue. (Boomkat)"

credits

released December 10, 2016

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