Clock Opera
Location: London
Website: http://myspace.com/clockopera
Bio: The delightfully splintered ‘White Noise’ is the first offering to emerge from London chop-pop production maestro Clock Opera. Fizzing with vitality, it blends the sound ... (more)
of a choir of jittering half-dismantled machines with the soaring vocals of Guy Connelly. Slowly building up from off kilter beginnings, it recounts a near death experience, time standing still as a rider-less motorbike careered towards him. It’s hardly surprising that the song unfurls into a vivid, life-affirming pop masterpiece.
Flip over to the other side and you’ll find ‘Alouette’, a spine-tingling fuzz of crushed glass guitar fragments and spectral synthesizer shimmers. Energetic comparisons with Four Tet seem apt at this stage, but find themselves quickly dispelled by the sustained power of Connelly’s vocal. Floating softly over this Truman Capote-inspired tale of ghosts of people that were never born, it evokes the skylark that gives the song its name.
The signature Clock Opera sound is spliced together from homemade samples and blunt instruments found in skips. Connelly bends them to his will, reanimating them into a sonic orchestra to support his ethereal pop compositions that have been sending ripples through the blogosphere. Subtleties continue to abound in his more direct input, with vocals that veer off into cascading harmonies and lyrics brimming with tender observations from the outside world, often filtered through his skewed imagination.
Connelly is one of those people who never stops. As well as upcoming remixes for Marina & The Diamonds (679 Recordings) and Phenomenal Handclap Band (Gomma), he has found the time to collaborate on a short film with Flat-e Visual Arts Collective and compose electro-orchestral scores and soundtracks for Rambert Dance Company & Tangled Feet Theatre.
He can’t do everything himself though. For the Clock Opera live show, he brought in Nick Dover (samplers), Andy West (bass), Che Albrighton (drums) to provide the necessary enhancements for a thrilling live show. Whilst the number of gigs played can still be counted on one hand, audiences have been left wowed during support slots for the likes of Marina + The Diamonds, O Children, Your Twenties and Django Django. Catch the band at one of their upcoming gigs, as the chop-pop machine really starts to pick up steam.
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