Playground In A Lake

In the late 2010s and early 2020s, the forays Clark took into scoring and modern composition suited the intricacy and breadth of his music. The elegiac second half of Death Peak, the suffused but unmistakable mourning of Kiri Variations, and the hallucinatory layers of shifting textures on the Daniel Isn't Real score can all be felt on Playground in a Lake, his first original album for Deutsche Grammophon. For this vision of ecological devastation and its aftermath, Clark combines disparate sounds -- folk, orchestral elements, and vintage '70s electronic experiments among them -- into something holistic and original. On its more introspective moments, Playground in a Lake reflects the beauty of spaces long abandoned by people. With plangent strings and distant vocals, "Forever Chemicals" paints a picture of a world that's desolate, but not empty; the chilly, insistent synth figure that drives "More Islands" summons images of rising water and shrinking land; and the softness of "Already Ghosts"' analog tones gives its hopelessness a fittingly spectral cast. The visceral dread at which Clark excels also gets plenty of showcases as Playground in a Lake unfolds. On "Aura Nera" and "Entropy Polychord" -- which manages to make a harp sound ominous -- the producer conjures vast sounds that overwhelm the listener with the magnitude of the loss he's describing. The fraught electronics and guttural bass on "Earth Systems" sound like the environment gearing up to retaliate for centuries of human abuse, and the feeling of apocalyptic doom deepens on the alternately taut and frantic "Shut You Down." To create such a massive statement, Clark enlisted a host of artists including Grizzly Bear's Chris Taylor, double bassist Yair Elazar Glotman, cellist Oliver Coates, and violinist Rakhi Sing, but his most attention-getting collaborator might be Nathaniel Timoney. The 12-year-old choirboy's voice floats eerily through the decaying tangles of electronics and cello on "Disguised Foundation" and rings out poignantly on "Small," where the freshness of his vocals makes for a brilliant contrast with the weariness of his words: "All we're left with are condolences/The more you were asking for it/The less tragic it is." Haunting and expertly crafted, Playground in a Lake takes its place alongside Bibio's Phantom Brickworks and Loscil's Monument Builders as a beautifully destroyed sonic environment that provokes a powerful emotional response. ~ Heather Phares