With the original tracks stripped of the MCing, ‘Instrumental Mixtape 2’ provides some explanation as to why an outsider auteur is working with the most progressive rappers in America, a unique voice in a homogenised mainstream. Imagine Cocteau Twins made entirely of codeine fumes or choral music crushed by power electronics. It’s the menacing echo of screwed hip-hop and mutated pop quivering in a vortex of urban ambience. Until then, he’ll have to settle for being the sound of 2012, and the sound in question is a mix of heavenly and hallucinatory, translucent, but stodgified with elephantine bass and cavernous beats. Considering, as well, Volpe’s influence on Abel ‘The Weeknd’ Tesfaye – himself leading an R&B revolution – Clams is a man who’s gonna have a big say in how 2013 will sound. Basically, Michael Volpe is co-ordinating a rap renaissance on three fronts: LA’s Lil B-fronted ‘Based’ revolution Orlando, Florida’s ‘cloud-rap’, spearheaded by Main Attrakionz and New York’s so-called ‘hipster-hop’, whose figurehead A$AP Rocky has Clams to thank for the epic ‘Palace’. Right now, Clams Casino is the shit-hottest producer in the world, the single point at which a clutch of America’s most cutting-edge trends converge.

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