Over that span of time, he worked only on the album, except for a few things that kept him from “going crazy or getting too sucked into” the project.

“I knew it was going take a really long time to complete my album, and that’s why I didn’t say anything about it until it was done and ready to come out,” he explains – a reticence that comes across in our interview as shyness. I’d rather be making new music than going on tour”ģ2 Levels is the culmination of more than two years of work, beginning with almost a year of sample collection in studios in New York, L.A. “I’ve never seen myself as a performer or a DJ. “With the range of music and the different types of artists – the whole scope of it is so wide – it needs to be organized in a certain way.” “The sequence of it is really important to me, and that’s the only way it really works,” he says via Skype from his New Jersey home. Herring, the album tells the story of Clams’ creative growth. As Lil B collaborations give way to songs with singers like Kelela and Future Islands frontman Samuel T. The record (which takes its title from seminal Clams-produced Lil B track ‘I’m God’) charts his development from crafter of mixtape cuts to producer on major labels’ speed-dials. On July 15, Clams Casino will release 32 Levels, his debut album and first proper body of work since 2011’s Rainforest EP. But those collaborations have been increasingly rare recently, with his output seemingly limited to a handful of songs per year.

His trio of Instrumentals mixtapes remain required listening for fans of hip-hop, electronic music and all points in between, and he’s gone on to produce tracks for The Weeknd, FKA twigs, Vince Staples and other. The producer born Michael Volpe emerged at the turn of the decade, producing breakthrough tracks for Lil B, A$AP Rocky and Main Attrakionz, and his lo-fi style – with its moody melodies, faraway vocal samples, and massive, in-the-red drums – came to define the sound known as “cloud rap” and make him an underground star in his own right. On the brink of his long-awaited debut album, Chris Kelly finds out what kept him so long.Īfter a few quiet years, Clams Casino is returning with his grandest artistic statement yet. But as offers flooded in from rap and pop A-listers alike, the New Jersey native retreated further into the shadows. His lo-fi beats-turned-breakout tracks for Lil B and A$AP Rocky paved the way for two disparate new rap icons and helped forge a fresh sound in the process – so-called cloud rap, which slowed hip-hop into queasy drifts of bass and synth. In 2012, Michael Volpe seemed to have the world at his feet.

Clams casino 32 levels samples