Bleep

Since his first composition credit in 2016 with The Last Panthers, Clark has built a reputation for expanding film and TV scores into intricate, exhilarating soundworlds of their own. Now with almost a decade of experience in orchestral collaborations, string ensemble arrangements, and growing vocal prowess (explored in his 2023 Bleep Album Of The Year Sus Dog) behind him, his latest soundtrack for Naqqash Khalid’s directorial debut In Camera does this to kaleidoscopic effect.

A kind of meta narrative centred on the Herculean trials of twenty-something actor Aden trapped in a cycle of rejection, the film follows themes of isolation, tokenism, and one's preordained place in the grand scheme of things (literally playing a part), sonified by ebbing and flowing waves of glitter that seem to call from a different time, better days looked back on from a squalid present. Clark ekes out the film's surreal “modern fairy tale” atmosphere with reversed vocals rendering his soft timbre enigmatic, and gauzy synthpop-esque chords carrying the bright eyed ambitions of new talent, while long yearns of saxophones encode doubts and desires.

Expressive tracks tread a blurry line between beautiful and unsettling, drawn by the monolithic chords of ‘Sensual Dismay’ towering over, or the clawing anxiety of ‘Non Specific Interview’, where quivering strings like beads of sweat threaten to drip as the jaws of sawtooth swells clamp down. The constant thud of ‘Running Dreams’ captures the routine of application, audition, feedback, sighingly echoing into ‘It's 450’ with post-rejection malaise. Meanwhile, the winding percussive synths of ‘Green Breaking’ dissolve momentum into a throbbing, surging wash, leading to the explosive The Carpenters / Sonic Youth cover ‘Superstar’ where ominous keys and a stomping beat are blown out by razed guitars descending in gnarly, guttural growls.

Clark extends his compositional elasticity for In Camera into an album of lamenting shades.