Conrad Clifton - Picture In Picture
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| Conrad Clifton - Picture In Picture |
Brooklyn producer Conrad Clifton
sounds like a hoity-toity guy with a summer house in the hills and a personal shopper
to choose his braces and bow ties but he looks like a cooler, less douchey
version of Will.I.Am. I'm a little late coming to this album but it's ten
tracks of instrumental beats and breaks that offer something a bit different so
I wanted to bring it to your attention. Kicking off with 'Vanilla Skyscraper',
Conrad Clifton drops some mellow, slightly Oriental melodies which manage to
skit around and flow smoothly all at the same time. The chimes that open up 'Crystal
Handgun' sound like the 80s clock in my friend's parents house from when I was
about 13 but the beats and melody are like something from the future. The
woozy, drunken sounding melodies continue on 'La Da Dee (He's Hopeless)' but with
the addition of some Cossack chanting which suggests Conrad may have played too
many retro computer games in his childhood.
There's a hyperactivity to
'Blacklight' that is, again, inspired by early Nintendo and Sega soundtracks
while 'Polaroid Pixels' features a weird, honky-tonk piano sound atop some
wistful, early morning sweeps that only last for a minute or so before
'Audition Subtraction' goes all dance mental on our collective asses.
'Obsessive Tendencies' is the sounds of Cola and Mentos reacting as filmed in
slow-mo before giving way to 'Mourning Gold', a song so sketchy and crazy that
it's likely to have been fed a diet of sugar and no sleep for about a week
before they Conrad started to record. As the album approaches the end, we get
'Too Honest' which again sounds like the menu music to Street Fighter but with
better beats while closing track 'Picture In Picture' has a cinematic,
dream-like quality that transforms in to a chest beating, posing piece of theme
music to cruise down the strip to. Clifton is not what you might expect and
that's what makes him so enjoyable so I recommend you get yourself some of this
to freshen up your ears a little.
More information: http://www.conradclifton.com/
Listen/Download: http://conradclifton.bandcamp.com/album/picture-in-picture