Little People
The art of collage has been an integral, if often over-used, part of the music scene ever since sampling first came into vogue, but few contemporary mixmasters can emulate an amphetamine-laced speed-through the satellite TV dial like DJ-producer Laurent Clerk, AKA Little People. Whatever he was watching and listening to while growing up in the Swiss Alps seems to have left him with somewhat of an attention deficit approach to programming hip-hop, skipping fast and randomly across an encyclopedic array of found sounds and electronic FX. It comes as no surprise to look up his bio and find that he’s long been into scoring offbeat indie film and stage productions, not to mention having his music heard in TV shows like the CSI franchise, which explains the cinematic grooves of his self-released 2006 debut Mickey Mouse Operation. That fragmented and then re-cemented sound is more evident than ever on the new album Landloper, his first release since 2015.
Though still built upon a waterbed of slushing and shifting instrumental base tracks, he’s now experimenting with several vocal collaborators, even though the mixing tends to chop up the singers’ contributions into unrecognizable puzzle pieces. Tracks such as the lead single “Skies Turn Blue” (featuring Tif Lamson of Givers) and the seven minute “Slow Shimmer” are surprisingly pastoral and almost acoustic, possibly due to lingering inspirations from his temporary relocation from England to Portland, Oregon. He didn’t exactly don flannel-with-a-dickie-sewn-in or start an alien abductee alumni club while stateside, but you know he didn’t stand out from anyone else at the local Starbucks until given away by his lilting British-Swiss accent. Now back in the UK, he’s getting ready to hit the road for a Landloper tour that brings him to the Soda Bar on April 11.