Clarence Park, Clark’s debut on Warp, rushed at the listener with kooky ideas because Clark really wanted to blow his audience away. His follow-up, “Empty the Bones of You,” doesn’t go to such lengths. Penned on the road, it’s a haggard beast fitting into the mold of Warp’s heavy-hitters like Plaid and Aphex Twin. At times his tracks seem about to fall into unconsciousness, but his brilliant drum work — where snares become smears that climb into other mutations on the central theme — is still there. Clark is still Clark, not delivering on the high promises “Clarence Park” hinted at, but casually penning that British ambience into his own forms. This is what Aphex Twin should sound like now, and it’s too bad one of Aphex’s proteges has to revisit the past to make us aware of that.
This article appears in Sep 3-9, 2003.