Claro Intelecto

Clubland April

Spring slowly brings a thaw to the chilling vise of winter that held London gripped between its icy jaws. Early mornings are met now with shimmering dew and blinding shards of golden sunlight, the foggy breath of harried commuters heaving a ragged seasonal farewell, scarves giving way to flashes of bare milky necks.

The last days of winter, like so much time before dawn can seem to be the darkest though. The days may be getting warmer and the mercury seldom dips below four degrees but spring seems to be dragging its heels, susceptible to an overnight flurry of snowfall or the odd blisteringly cruel wind.
It has been in these dying days of winter here that I have found solace in a startlingly evocative album, one that is – despite the name of the composer, as English as Yorkshire pudding or shoddy customer service.
Claro Intelecto is not an Italian electronic genius, though you’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise. He is in fact an alter ego of 35 year old Mancunian Mark Stewart, who alongside Andy Stott (check out their joint Resident Advisor podcast from a couple of months back for more on their sound) has breathed some much needed fresh air into the lungs of English techno over the past few years. Stott’s stripped back and dubby approach to techno has seen him notch up a collectable discography of singles and the impressive 2006 album Merciless, all on the Modern Love imprint from Manchester, while Stewart under the Claro Intelecto banner has been commanding attention since his brilliant 2003 debut Peace of Mind EP on Ai Records. His Warehouse Sessions releases have been torch songs to the long lost days of big room raves and with his newest long player, Metanarrative he has crafted a truly beautiful album of deep techno (and that’s not something you can say very often).
With much of techno these days focusing on the intricate trickeries of programming and layering of sounds, Metanarrative will at first get your attention by the amount of space there is around the music. It’s an album in which every track gets to breathe and move, not then a dance floor aimed claustrophobic shuffle of Ritalin minimalism. No, this is an album that begins with a whisper and ends with a sigh, packing a weighty discourse on electronic emotions in between those two points. Stewart/Intelecto apparently started off with over one hundred possible tracks for this album and after culling off the weak, was left with eight sublime moments of techno to sink yourself in to. Filled with translucent pads, ethereal strings, and kicks that bottom out into sonic smudges, the tracks amble along at an unhurried rate, offset by simple melodies, hopeful meanderings that make light of the worryingly deep bass lines. At more than point listening to Metanarrative you’ll find yourself wondering where you’ve heard those keys before, and time and again early Nurture releases spring to mind, particularly Imitate Your Environment by Peak:Shift. I’m also reminded of Theo Parrish on some tracks and the earlier house of Larry Heard; so simply yet utterly hypnotic is the groove created.
Gone to the Dogs goes darker than any of the other tracks and sits somewhere between a demonic Moritz von Oswald opus and a Surgeon track on tranquilizers. Stripped of any sense of beauty, it’s a raw, dirty, one track minded techno dub track, and still just as effective as the more obvious tracks before and after it.
Metanarrative exhales with Beautiful Death, a mournful farewell to what is a lonely, yet wonderfully fulfilling album.
Also have a look out for Claro Intelecto’s Rise twelve inch, released as a white label and limited to 500 copies, it’s somewhere in between the drum heavy Warehouse Sessions and the stark strokes of Metanarrative.