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Rating: This man does not put on airs at all, unlike someone who could boast of being a founding father and having played in electro-pop bands such as Depeche Mode, Yazoo, or Erasure, and furthermore, of being a synth-pop legend.
Clarke today is an experimenter with craft, who presents his solo debut with Songs of Silence, conceived during the last lockdown of 2020.
A time of suffering and closure did not prevent Vince from mentally pushing beyond the confines of four domestic walls, channeling his creative and compositional sensitivity.
The sound's archistar knows how to be a panther in the electronic jungle. All this without any vocal intervention from him or any vocalist. Electronic experimentation is what he knows how to do and what excites him; it certainly does not represent the comfort zone that embodies success for the masses and the star business of the majors who cry miracle.
The album is generated with sounds developed from the Eurorack, a modular synthesizer from the '90s, and each track is based on a single note with a single key throughout. The pieces are thus equivalent to wordless narratives, with a sense of cosmic distance generated by the synth, with electric shocks manually inserted. There's an air of Berlin School.
Cathedral resonates like a sacred symphony starting precisely with its angelic atmospheres, echoes, and reverbs; White Rabbit traces paths already beaten by the master and could appear as the closing credits soundtrack of a noir film; Imminent with its hypnotic charm; Red Planet recalls atmospheres suspended between sky and earth, like an astronaut bouncing on the surface of Uranus. Space and science fiction are clear influences on the nebulous construction of the sounds. The sharp ticking in Last Transmission is striking, revealing the text through the spaceship's computer terminal.
The Lamentations of Jeremiah gives way to rich strings and synth.
The flow of music is decidedly intense, yet never falls into the trap of boredom or soporific monotony. The pieces are about ¾ minutes long, which is rather rare in the ambient genre, whose tracks can become unpalatable due to excessive length with a self-satisfied droning dish in tow.
The soundscape is as light as a silky drape, delicate and protective like a maternal womb.
Fortunately, we have masters like Vince who, without any rush or desire to climb the charts, remind us that music is something else entirely. A philosophical and essential music, where meditation reigns, where a haunting joy persists, a sense of sadness from things going wrong that could inevitably implode. There is a mix of contemplation and imminent loss.
Clarke is not an artifact or a relic.
He is a young veteran of 63 springs.
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