Clark announces 'Playground In A Lake' album with AFRODEUTSCHE, Oliver Coates and more
Clark is releasing his ninth studio album, ‘Playground In A Lake’, this March via Deutsche Grammophon.
The LP will feature Clark on vocals, piano, synthesisers and cello, alongside Oliver Coates on cello, Chris Taylor on clarinet, Rakhi Singh on violin, AFRODEUTSCHE, and Kieran Brunt on backing vocals, Yair Elazar Glotman on contrabass, and 12-year-old choir singer Nathaniel Timoney on vocals.
Thematically, the album explores climate change via the idea of the last human on Earth, as well as biblical mythology and the human condition on the album.
About the new record, Clark said: “I’ve always wanted to record strings, but feel there’s this baggage with classical music. Even though I’ve taught myself how to read and write sheet music, I’m not putting that genre, or any other genre on a silver platter. I’m not from an institutionalised contingent who deem a narrow range of instruments ‘the real stuff’ and everything else worthless commercial pop. I take what I admire from that world and then move on. I’m just using it as another colour.
“So, I started thinking about my favourite kind of string arrangements, like Scott Walker records, where they exist amongst contrasting elements. Then I started to approach the album from a dark folk place, also with this heavy ’70s synth style. Then came the improvisation of musique concrète, and some of my favourite modern classical and sound design obsessions, and then it clicked.”
Clark’s last album, ‘Kiri Variations’, came out on Throttle Records in 2019.
Watch the album trailer and listen to single ‘Small’:
