The collection begins with, what else? – the brilliant I’m God.
The Rainforest EP was aptly titled, as the Clams Casino sound envelops you like the high humidity in such an environment, and titles like Treetop, Caves and Leaf conjure up a bushwalk in the Wet Tropics – intriguingly convincing for a kid from New Jersey. But it’s the ambiance that is the difference with the production: there’s a palpable sense of atmosphere to all the spaces in between the more conspicuous elements. The genre on display here is essentially “instrumental ambient hip hop,” with some seriously slow beats that provide a platform for a heady swirl of melodic samples. He linked up with the likes of Lil’ B, A$AP Rocky, Mac Miller, Danny Brown, MF DOOM and Souljah Boy, and has remixed everyone from Vince Staples and Lee “Scratch” Perry to Sia and Lana Del Rey. He used MySpace to find rappers to email beats to, and the rest is history. Best known as a pioneer of “cloud rap,” Clams (Michael Volpe) began producing tunes from his computer while living at home and studying physiotherapy at uni.
A Clams Casino official compilation of instrumental tracks? I’m in! This release is a best-of from Clams’s 2010s Instrumentals 1–4 series that he put out from 2011 to 2017, and also includes tracks from his first vinyl release, the Rainforest EP (Triangle).
