100% Electronica by George Clanton
Imagine being stuck in a montage of space-age alien teenage love scenes set in the distant future from the point of view of a lovesick little vaporwave boy finding his way in a post-seapunk world. Now listen to George Clanton’s 100% Electronica. Now tell me that your whirling music-induced hallucination isn’t soaking with trippy melodramatic moments captured by a pair of surreal, old-school, sci-fi cinematographic weed goggles.
George Clanton (FKA Mirror Kisses) has the special ability to blend his beautifully balanced *aesthetic* with a consistent and streamlined, yet dynamic and wild sound without regurgitating, recycling, or reviving other Net Pop that was just invented, and then declared “over,” yesterday. Having known George personally for a few years now, I’ve had the opportunity to hear his music and watch his live performance be sculpted into what it is now. I used to think it was mostly cool pop music with a strong 80s influence. Which, yeah sure, it is. But after seeing him countless times and getting to play shows with him, as well as actually playing live drums for him, now I feel like it is more of a meditation on electronic music, electronic sounds, and electronic emotions.
100% Electronica starts off with “Never Late Again,” a very groovy track that I see as a sort of theme song intro—not quite anthem—to this idea of an electronica meditation chamber; it is an introduction that puts its arm around your shoulder and gets you to see eye to eye with where its coming from. The next track, “Keep a Secret,” really puts us in the thick of the wilderness of the album and introduces us to the range of elemental qualities that we might encounter throughout our stay at Club Clanton. Drippy steel drums give us a fire to cast a soft light on the bed of the lasery bass, where cascading chimes rain over the chirps of the little digital grasshoppers. Of course there are green teenagers with antennas dry humping each other in the middle of this beautiful net art meadow.
After a couple upbeat tracks that take us to a few different levels, we hit “Wonder Gently,” more of a dark, sad, slow jam. It presents a deeper introspection. It feels brooding and defensive in a sincere, interesting, abstract way, perhaps hurt? “Everyone can’t get along, don’t you know?” Either way, the album takes a dark turn there, followed by “Bleed,” which is where that essential anthemic quality enters the atmosphere. “Bleed” takes the new dark magic from “Wonder Gently” and transforms with that slow bouncy groove, which catches up to us after the airy intro. Sort of like how overcoming something heartbreaking can catch up to you and give you momentum. The whole song, then, drops and shatters through companionship and the hopping along and straight up takes off into one of those dreams where you’re flying over the ocean to someplace far away.
The soundtrack to this dream is “Warmspot,” perhaps my favorite song on the album. It sort of puts us right into the calm of the empty ocean and the introspection that follows the running away and the emotional breaking down before it. It allows us to come to terms with the epiphany of ending of our human form and world, giving us the confidence to evolve into our true, final, alien form. The bright sky is winding down into the nighttime, as does the album. Mirroring how the first few tracks escalate the energy, the last few tracks bring us to a cozier realm. Not a realm in which we sleep, but one where we come out of the soaring dream to walk around the world, within our waking selves, in the dark, to fulfill the sick, lovestruck psychosis that drives us to stab the ones we love to death with a lightsaber in their bed, run away, and never look back.
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