‘Speaker-bustin dance music’. Says it all really. And whilst the term ‘techno pioneer’ might be an outrageously overgenerous moniker for anyone whose greater body of work was crafted in the mid-nineties, there’s no doubting that Dave Clarke is an undisputed beat champ. He might be a little misunderstood, he may have a fight on his hands in troubling the mainstream, but as ‘Devils Advocate’ confirms, Clarke is incendiary fringe material.
The one-time hip hop and soul DJ weaved hip hop deep into the mix of his 1996 debut Archive One, but on his second album Devils Advocate, he’s getting pretty gritty. It may not be quite as radical or as belligerent as Aphex Twin, as avate-garde as Plaid, or as genre-defying as someone like T. Raumschmiere but on the evidence of what we have here – he’s not that silky smooth either.
Collaborating with Berlin’s favourite daughters Chicks on Speed on the niggling and infectious sequences of ‘She’s In Parties’ and chicago house lynchpin DJ Rush on the beatsy and tom-tastic opener ‘Way Of Life’, Clarke is furrowing a nice old niche for himself with some inspired associations that bring out the unique characteristics of the individual artists without ever really having to over rely on them for ideas. In fact, quite the opposite, ‘Devils Advocate’ whilst having more guest appearances than an entire series of Parkinson in the first half, listens less like a string of parts than a well-timed, well-charged and moderate whole. So what unifies it? Its bass heavy darkness and electrokraut simplicity, as the cover of Bauhaus’s ubercool ‘She’s In Parties’ demonstrates quite tersely: part gothic, part trapped in the high voltage mains of an out and out kinky machine.
In 2001, Clarke released the World Service compilation, featuring a rather portentous guestlist of artists: Hacker, Fischerspooner and Adult. In many ways ‘Devils Advocate’ is a culmination of that project. And though he’s more likely to be debuting his album at Creamfields than spinning it out at art-fashion clubs like Nag Nag Nag, Clarke has again managed to body-swerve the club-rot. Even at an unkind 16 minutes in length, ‘Addendum’ is pure class.
In his own words, “It’s filthy, it’s got a charm and it’s got the funk.”
Spit on that…