Hometown: Berlin.
The lineup: Laura Clock (vocals, music).
The background: Laura Clock has been a ghostly presence in this column for a while, her diaphanous vocals assuming cameo, supporting roles on records by spectral San Franciscan oOoOO and the “desolate disco” of fellow Berlin-based artist O F F Love. Now she has taken centre stage, although she is as wispy and ethereal a figure as ever: iPod beats and high, ethereal vocals – what else is there? The music collected on Laura Clock’s SoundCloud, and the four tracks that come with this article, represent some of the best – that is to say alluringly weird yet strangely commercial – music we’ve heard all year.
The first comparison point that came to mind when we heard the singer/producer cooing in such an eerily pretty fashion over those icy, swirlingly detailed synths, the synapse-tweaking sub-bass and beautifully brutal beats (notice that she’s signed to Rinse), was Maria Minerva. The latter was part of a new wave of DIY female laptop electronicists that we featured in 2011, which also included Grimes, Nite Jewel and Laurel Halo. As it turns out, clearly recognising a kindred spirit, Laura Clock – when she was operating under the name Butterclock – toured the US with Minerva in 2013.
That’s when she issued an EP titled First Prom, featuring the relatively conventional dance-pop of Holograms, Sorry Love, which was slower, more sombre and sorrowful, with a lyric (“You took my breath away”) that evoked not rapture but the dark side of ravishment, and Don’t, which brought back memories of Salem (the witch house group, if not the site of the notorious 17th century witch trials).
Her new EP, her first as Laura Clock – Baby Part 1 – is a collection of love songs, or rather, songs written in the wake of a failed love affair: “You’re so dead to me,” she sings, but the musical context is glossy but glacial electronic pop: think Kylie in hell. “l wrote this song as an empowering statement, trying to get over someone, or over something,” Clock told The Fader, talking about opening track Fade. “Speaking to those who dance in the club ’til eight in the morning to forget. But behind the upbeat shimmers lies darker truth.”
Gotta dance to keep from crying? It’s an ancient imperative, but it is one that is brought startlingly up to date here. Fade has a dislocating dancehall rhythm, while the references to “broken summers” make it sound like a remix of Bananarama’s Cruel Summer by a depressed reggaeton producer. Fantasy is dreamlike, with all the unsettling images that term conjures. Clock’s voice is a simulacrum, a fantasy, of the darkly desirous pop female. It’s so strategic – she knows exactly what she’s doing. “All I have is eyes for you” – there is a sense of pop tropes being reconfigured. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do” – it’s almost a subversion of the submissive pop female. The music, meanwhile, produced by London’s Ana Caprix, is all shimmering longing and heavenly harps. Cold (“I can’t wait to be far from you”) is an exquisite elegy to an ex on which Clock’s Auto-Tuned vocal makes her sound all the more human. Other tracks on her SoundCloud include Hustling – which offers the sort of nice/nasty duality connoted by pop names such as Strawberry Switchblade and My Bloody Valentine – and Underworld, a funereal synthscape, like Joy Division’s Decades performed by Kylie in the throes of dark despair. You won’t be able to get her out of your head.
The buzz: “A dreamily swaying expression of longing and unrequited love.”
The truth: If Kylie was a laptop producer influenced by grime and witch house …
Most likely to: Haunt you.
Least likely to: Wear gold lame hotpants.
What to buy: The Baby Part 1 EP is released by Rinse on June 15.
File next to: Maria Minerva, Grimes, Nite Jewel, Laurel Halo.
Links: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Butterclock/174223684889.
Ones to watch: Dolce, Daye Jack, Sivik, Holly Waxwing, Barli.
