“Belongings”
from the single Belongings
2011
iTunes
Clock Opera’s creations always feel like a gigantic culling of so many things all gathered up and put in the same place. Of course, his genius is not simply the ability to pick and pull these spacious cacophonies but to order, chopping and settling sonics, sometimes by the finest of margins, in their right place in the hopes of turning chaos to order. On new Moshi Moshi single Belongings, Clock Opera builds a glittering array of synths, erecting this tower higher and higher until the 3:43 mark, when his creation either grows wings or jet engines (you pick the metaphor) and explodes from the tethers of gravity. The end is the whirring of a piano before “Belongings” evaporates before your very eyes. All those disparate impulses pulled together for only a moment, more loyal to their original disorder than even this mercurial engineers’ machine.