[Discussed: Baseball, breakthroughs, water, sound logos, Neoplatonism, exotica, Avatar, cenobites, recording technology, Hanging Rock, Darth Maul, hypnotism, The Skaters.]
It might be convenient to describe Spencer Clark’s music as ‘world music,’ or something similar, if the far away worlds he evoked weren’t of his own creation. The California-born musician uses sound to conjure distant islands or esoteric ceremonies not as an homage to other cultures, but as a document of his own inner experience.
Spencer’s records are immersive, and he has spent many hours deeply immersing himself in order to make them. He prepares diligently for his role as both travel guide and translator: hires hypnotists, reads laminated pages of Plato underwater. He does this so we, the listeners/travelers, don’t have to.
On albums like Avatar Blue or Pinhead in Fantasia Spencer also employs themes from pop culture’s recent past—Hollywood references and dated MIDI tones, but these records aren’t critical pop commentaries or nostalgic explorations. Clark is reflecting his surroundings—in this case, pervasive pop culture, history, dreams—the way a transcendentalist painter might. He researches and engages with his subject, finding entry points within these modern representations to access something divine, or divine something new.
Clark records and performs under aliases like Monopoly Child Star Searchers, Vodka Soap, Black Joker, Fourth World Magazine, Typhonian High Life, and more. As a young man he performed with longtime friend James Ferraro in the influential duo The Skaters.
Clark’s latest release is a collaboration with Francesco Cavaliere under the name Etrus- ca 3D. He lives in Antwerp, Belgium, where he operates the label Pacific City Sound Visions, and co-heads the imprint Pacific City Discs.
______________________________________________
A friend in San Francisco told me about a legendary grand slam you hit once.
Yeah, that was Justin Flowers. He and I were the two starting pitchers on a baseball team called Egypt ’84, managed by Adam Stonehouse. I came up with the bases loaded, in a game where we needed to win to go to the playoffs. I had a Norwegian friend there who video’d it. Right before I went up to bat one of our players—John, the guy who owns the Knockout- -came up to me and said, ‘Try this bat!’ It was a bat from a major league player that had been used in the major leagues. The guy was a Giants pitcher, Jason Schmidt.
The pitcher got two strikes on me, but I wasn’t worried, because he wasn’t a hard thrower, and I knew I couldn’t strike out. He threw me a curveball that didn’t curve, and it was ‘ciao.’
Have you kept up with the MLB recently? They have virtual people in the stands and stuff like that. Like avatars.
I keep up by reading the scoring lines. But baseball has changed so much with iPad metrics, it’s hard to watch.
You said the copies of a record you’re putting out came in the mail yesterday. Which record is it?
It’s this record I did with this Italian guy, Francecso Cavaliere. He’s a really good friend of mine. It’s called Etrusca 3D. We worked on it for two years. We made a record that’s about the Etruscan civilization, and saying the names of the Gods and channeling them, creating some sort of new cultural representation of them. He is Etruscan; he’s from Tuscany.