George Clanton

There's been some chitter-chatter about this guy in other threads but given his excellent new album Slide and the fact that even Pitchfork is paying attention I think its time he got his own dedicated thread. My introduction was the virtua.zip album he released under his vaporwave moniker ESPRIT 空想, which led to a really cool moment when I listened to 100% Electronica and realized that the dude was just sampling his own stuff, something that's gotta be pretty rare in this genre. Anyone else a fan???

huge fan of both fenkadelic and porliament here

I kept confusing him with Clarence Clarity for some reason.

Is he anything more than George Clinton in a Belfast accent?

I'm a fan and I took the same route as you frogbs

I absolutely adore 'Bleed', and wish his other stuff gave me the same hit

I really like the new album, some parts of it are so Loveless

here are two really great songs added to the Bad Dreams remaster. I get "Dance Yrself Clean" vibes from the first one. Though it's maybe a better song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OYNNilpjYs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYYFvZQFrY8

man 200% Electronica is so good. maybe one of the most addictive vaporwave albums I've ever heard. this tune in particular has a real jaw dropping moment in it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-iVxBoX8Ec

I really enjoyed it the first time I heard it but it has paid diminishing returns for some reason. Probably listener error

hah it was kinda like that for me, the 1st time I thought it was brilliant, then the next few times it felt a bit bland, then I shelved it for a month and when I came back it suddenly sounded amazing again

grew up with this dude. very cool to see him getting some attention.

lmao he's collabing with the dude from 311 now

https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/8531401/311-nick-hexum-george-clanton-collab-two-singles

bring on the full LP this rules

man how did i miss this news a year ago!!

horrible insomnia last night, just wrecked this morning at 5:30am killing a whole french press and then learning about this album's existence and feeling great, listening and now feeling even better

actually this kinda sucks unfortunately

I listened in full yesterday. His slowed down beats are really grating on me these days, even though I love a lot of the old Esprit stuff. Somehow the sound quality of the beats seems degraded in a way that I haven’t noticed in a lot of other slowed tracks by other artists. (The slide album also suffers from this...is it just me?)
I do like the Topanga state of mind track and Time of Wandering, can kind of take or leave the rest.

https://i1.sndcdn.com/artworks-000356422005-kwznk6-t500x500.jpg

i loved this album, especially with the reason heat wave

Love what he does, can’t stomach more than two songs of his at a time. I don’t think I’d play a full album of his ever but in small doses I love it.

grew up with this dude. very cool to see him getting some attention.

― dynamicinterface, Thursday, January 31, 2019 5:53 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

wait we let Zoomers post here?

huge fan of both fenkadelic and porliament here

― my dream is to never be a champion (bizarro gazzara), Tuesday, September 4, 2018 2:32

irl lol

lol was just gonna quote that again. every time I see the thread title I think of that post and giggle.

Love what he does, can’t stomach more than two songs of his at a time. I don’t think I’d play a full album of his ever but in small doses I love it.

his albums are all pretty short, in fact there are a couple which fit on one side of vinyl

one cool thing about the vinyl is that it's meant to be played at 45 RPM but if you play it at 33 you can hear the vaporwave remix version

Somehow the sound quality of the beats seems degraded in a way that I haven’t noticed in a lot of other slowed tracks by other artists. (The slide album also suffers from this...is it just me?)

yea I can't figure out if this was intentional - sometimes it feels like his music is meant to be heard blasting out of a 24" Panasonic TV

I like the new album a lot. Doesn't feel groundbreaking or important in the way Slide did but its a fun summer disc that captures a really cool vibe...its kinda what I expect some of my old CDs to sound like when I revisit them

the nick hexum album sounds so much better now that the summer is over

The album is still cheesy af but GC does a good

Aghhhh

'crash pad' is so fun

I really love "King For a Day" but the whole album is great. "Shouldn't Have Done That" maybe the best track

huge fan of both fenkadelic and porliament here

― my dream is to never be a champion (bizarro gazzara), Tuesday, September 4, 2018 3:32 PM bookmarkflaglink

I made a meme about this

https://i.imgur.com/Y107cLO.png

new one in two days

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKIKSt4m6MI

huge fan of both fenkadelic and porliament here

just killing me

yeah I still LOL at that one when I open this thread

If I was a musician and my real name was that similar to a musical household name I would have used a nom de plume

Ad and music has a happy Mondays feel

when I first heard of him I thought it was! I mean it's not like vaporwave ain't full of people calling themselves things like "Barry Seinfeld"

holy shit @ this thing's RYM rating

Rob Harvilla briefly got into the Clanton/Clinton thing on his latest podcast...

“It doesn’t matter what you think of me / You’re never gonna be the vapor king”.

Hahaha what

i like the tracks where he's going for loveless-with-synths

My facebook post about this album. It's rough but it's not like I'm being asked to write about it properly.

So, George Clanton's Ooh Rap I Ya is my AOTY, so far by a country mile. Maybe I'll soon find it's my favourite of the decade so far.

Mostly I really like there being this whole modern sphere of heartfelt musical pastiche that I don't have it in me to be at all cynical about. My favourite dance record of all time - especially in its Subsonic Grid Mix - is the Grid's Floatation. Both of ORIY's lead singles sounded like committed tributes to it, and now the rest of the album expands and progresses from that notion. The oceanic Weatherall rhythms, Balearic piano crashes - they're all present and correct and effective, but also genuinely vital sounding. Where chillwave has generally tended to sound leaden and conservative to me, it feels like Clanton's smart idea to negotiate conference between it and the music of Hypnotone, Sheer Taft, the Boy's Own crew and other likeminded thinkers from 1990 - that beautiful year of unbridled optimism and melting pot music - has finally fully realised chillwave's potential. It could even be seen as joining parts of the early, wide-eyed Saint Etienne (where A.R. Kane, World of Twist, baroque and Italo house were natural allies) with their, cough, *vaporous* contemporary selves (cf. I've Been Trying to Tell You). I'm going to really enjoy listening to this one over the year and seeing what else it is I notice it doing.

Nice post

Personally I find it very samey sounding. I liked the Esprit stuff - very effective gateway to vapor - but all of his later solo stuff has left me cold

I usually avoid hyped albums until the hype dies down a little but this one is actually very impressive.

it's a good album but i'm not blown away or anything, i don't quite get all the rym hype

i think he should have put woodwinds all over this, would have been a good vibe

solid record
think i prefer slide but deffo gonna give this a few spins

I have it a second chance and glad I did

He was the opening act for Caroline Polachek a few months ago, an amiable goof with cool pot leaf and super Mario visuals. I was surprised how much he sounded like Deftones with the heavy guitars replaced by synth drones.

Deftones is stoner music so it pans out

George would probably appreciate that comparison

I was expecting it to be way more vaporwave, but it was fun

anyway I do think white horse's review is spot on. like a lot of 100% Electronica stuff this very much feels like what music might sound like today if a different set of 90s trends really took off. I actually dig how samey his stuff is - I don't think he's repeating himself exactly but he's obviously one of those artists with a specific library of sounds. I guess this feels like Slide & 200% at once but kind of the best of both worlds. plus it sounds nice, although it's still kinda blown out in a way that makes me wonder if he has hearing damage.

saw him last night, this dude is very much enjoying being a rock star right now. crazy to think I was watching videos of him playing to like 3 people in a bowling alley nearly a decade ago. also got to meet death's dynamic shroud (well, 2 of them) and they were incredibly nice. gotta say though that might be the loudest show I've ever been to, even with earplugs in the whole time my ears are still buzzing

album is definitely mastered in the red. it seems like people are latching onto what the record wants to be (voice of a generation post vapor wave recession internet malaise reclaim the promise of the 90s type shit) than what it is (a couple solid vaporwave-pop bangers alongside some less solid efforts)

idk I don't think the record "wants to be" much more than a cool nostalgia-tinged dance record, there are tons of vaporwave albums out there which try to make grand cultural statements but this doesn't feel like one of them. I can tell you at this show it kinda felt like the times I saw LCD Soundsystem back in 2007 but it was a different type of young crowd, I mean these people were geeking out trying to pull his clothes off and shit

as far as the mastering goes I'm never quite sure if his records are actually supposed to sound that way. I always thought it was a bit like James Ferraro's lo-fi stuff where the blurriness makes you hear a lot of cool stuff that maybe isn't actually there. live it sounded awesome but yeah given the volume I can get why he masters them like that