Music Sub-Editor GEMMA-REESE ROGERS interviews clust.r ahead of the release of their new album autumn break down.
You can find clust.r, an idiosyncratic music artist and producer hailing from Nashville, Tennessee, under the banner of laptop twee. This term, newly conceived by artist collective and bloggers friends&, relates to a microgenre of indie music that possesses an abrasive, glitchy awareness. clust.r has shouldered a few projects in the past, most notably her freshly-dead DIY label Retrac Recordings. If you sniff around on Bandcamp, you can still find it. There, an array of real-world “computer music” refuses to succumb to the insufferable ‘indie sleaze’ label that has ensnared many nostalgia-baited netizens who are bludgeoned with impending doom every time they close Instagram.
Unlike the saturated skeuomorphic appeal of Frutiger Aero, or the performative trashiness of the late ‘00s, clust.r releases an unconventional form of hypnagogic pop. Through aggressive post-processing and active reflections on older IDM, clust.r’s music stimulates one to reminisce. Its sentimentality arrives playful, yet unashamedly perturbed. It makes sense, then, for clust.r to be supporting duo Bassvictim on their upcoming US tour, who cultivated hypnotic hardcore whimsy on their latest album Forever.
Ahead of its release, I was fortunate enough to be sent clust.r’s newest album autumn break down via a private Soundcloud stream. Following her sophomore record ever chance, clust.r’s voice is fully fledged yet inescapably anxious. It’s a product of internalised frustrations, where intimate revelations are blurted across twenty minutes of hyperactive beats. Less a project and more a process, autumn break down relays free-flowing emotion through fragmented expression. Each track exists in symbiosis: feelings stretch across songs and are decompartmentalised for the better. The album’s ability to harbour intrigue primarily comes from its lyrical ambiguity: listeners must sift through multitextured layers of sound to reach them, fashioning personal ties to each track along the way. It was interesting to note the written format of the accompanying lyrics, assisting like much-needed footnotes and charmingly abbreviated, like late-night poetry extracted from the Notes app.
The first track, “we begin” possesses an arresting scuzziness. Two opposing sounds partake in a diatribe: one is glossed with airy glissandos, the other weighed down in screamo. Slowly, they meld together and formulate a strange but “beautiful future”, successfully encapsulating what is to come on autumn break down—an offbeat void of confrontation, where sonic clarity is scattered around like fragments of light.
The two pre-released singles, “mrs right” and “face down” stick their landings. “mrs. right” has the sensibility of an elusive automaton if it had the freedom to sing in Droidspeak. clust.r breaks through in parts, but its laments are camouflaged in vfx. Instead, both tracks let their instrumentals reverberate self-indulgently. “face down” is the most assured headbanger out of the two. Its muffled lyrics (“spread she spread she spread she/you were cordless”) sound as though they had been recorded underwater. They float above the jaunty sound with a sleepiness that nullifies any overwhelm that would have punctured the final product if the original delivery was kept.
“win win” is a wonderful standout. A carefree welcome break of a song that cuts through the amalgamation of any previous confusion, it is a riot. Laced with roaring synths, “win win” takes serious influence from the defiant rhythms of Justice’s Cross and the groove of N.E.R.D’s Nothing. The song revels in the act of “tak[ing]”, sticking its tongue out at you in the process (“but a win is a win is a win is a win”) and is autumn break down at its most addictive.
Some of the songs on the album take a little longer to stick. “a migraine” is the clearest example of this: an overload of fuzzy sound tightly blankets the vocals, making you strain to hear what’s being conveyed. When reading the lyrics, however, its message is exceptionally poignant to the point where it stands to question the reasoning behind their concealment. Emotion is densely packed in lines “unequivocally mine/are we going gonna wrap it up then in/to a bonding-like experiment/vacuum of me all the time”—lyrics so remarkably brilliant that I’m still pondering over what they could possibly mean.
autumn break down reanimates what retrospectiveness can sound like in electronic music. Despite ending on a bittersweet note via the meta lyrics of final track “playback” (“i wonder what i do this all for/then you tell me the words right”), it is a palatable soup of post-noise music that detangles its existential clutter in real listening time, whilst providing space for you to dance along.
The following interview was conducted via Instagram DM through the format of a shared Google Doc (quotes are given exactly as written).
How would you describe your sound to someone who’s never heard you before?
digital mutations of indietronica stretched and filtered through the lens of an anxious 20-something year old
What’s the story behind naming your project autumn break down?
in october i had a really good emotional outburst and finally knew who i wanted to be for once. i admitted i wasn’t living authentically and was generally unhappy with my life. it felt good to process everything going on and by finishing this album i think i understand myself a bit better, something that has happened with each clust.r album, i would say.
Who or what were you drawing from creatively when making this album—musically or personally?
a lot of what my friends are doing, to be honest. i’m happy to be settling into a little niche on the internet and being friends with so many amazing creatives. we all have similar brainrot and are all super passionate about our music, and it’s been cool to see some of it starting to gain traction. my friend jc just dropped an album with his band, friends&, called “folx” and having been there for a few years of the album’s production, i can say i’ve picked up so many techniques and ideas from this dude. though i experimented more with my style on “autumn break down,” the first two clust.r albums were a direct result of finding his music and getting inspired to create something in a similar vein. other stuff i listened to included clarence clarity, los thuthanaka, james ferraro, les rallizes denudes, lauren bousfield, early vaporwave, Instagram reels, baile funk, kwaito, and old Burmese pop rock.
How collaborative was the making of this album—who else was in the room?
my previous album “ever chance” was way more collaborative but on this one i sang on and produced everything. however i recorded or sampled my friends playing instruments a few times: my friend will on drums; jc, cam, and rohan on guitars; and jay on sax.
The production on this album feels very electronically futuristic but lyrically, it is grounded in present-day human frustrations. What are the central themes in this project?
honesty and communication in relationships, dysphoria and self-image, self-confidence and self-doubt, patience and impatience, basically learning to envision who i want to be all the while processing complicated and contradictory feelings.
You’re supporting Bassvictim next month in New York and California. What can people expect from your performances and do you think your songs hit differently in live shows versus on a streaming platform?
i will be singing along to my songs and just generally not trying to freak out. i have a couple songs from my last album “ever chance” (particularly the ones i was the vocalist on), but then i’m also playing this new album, which is thankfully short enough to fit in my set! the music of clust.r is definitely coming from the mind of someone who uses the internet a lot, but i think performing this stuff live will likely help people understand the human aspect a bit more.
autumn break down releases on Friday 6th March. Featured image courtesy of Bandcamp.