Ah, here's the album that readily cemented Chris Clark as more than just a Warp addendum who could craft some cool beats. This is the album that really proved Clark's worth in the electronic scene. After the somewhat jokey, goodtime-focused Clarence Park—an album that, while great in its own right, was put to trial by the shrill cries of the ever-vigilant “Aphex Clone” crowd—and an additional LP in 2003 (Empty the Bones of You), Clark returned in 2006 with a new moniker and a new repertoire of skills.
Of course, everything on Body Riddle is hinted at on Clarence Park—the memorial piano twinkle of “Pleen 1930s” has become the deadly slow-drawl of “Springtime Epigram”, the miniature techno of “The Chase” has been replaced with the more immediate “Night Knuckles”, and the electro-flute on “Lord of the Dance” has been swapped for the inspiring mega-thump of “Ted”. As much as I love Clarence Park, Body Riddle is simply the Goliath in Chris Clark's beat-backed bible. But instead of rooting for David, you find yourself egging on the more mature, stronger, fuller-bodied Goliath—because man-oh-man, you get the feeling he can take down anyone he wants.
And that's exactly what Clark does on Body Riddle—not only does he blow his previous works out of Jericho and into whatever sand-stifled Arabic nation it's adjacent to, but he also manages to take down a few of his contemporaries. Take for instance “Night Knuckles”, which calls to mind Four Tet's “Spirit Fingers”. Instead of Kieran Hebden's “Just get me a Moog and a mandolin and we can chill all night loooong, man” attitude, however, we find dizzying grimness beneath the Lullatone-on-speed melody. “Herzog” takes a stab at being Boards Of Canada the hard way, skewing the usual formula of children's voice and substantial hip-hop beats for a sound remarkably reminiscent of “Triangles and Rhombuses”. “Roulette Thrift Run”, meanwhile, is a showcase of deep funk and dissected mantras, a sound that seems to recall Wagon Christ.
Hell, Clark even gives Squarepusher's noise-inflected, broken-drum-n-bass schtick a fresh gloss on the transformational “Matthew Unburdened”. Moving from a gravity-defying intro and into a vulnerable, string-fueled mental breakdown, Clark then serves the listener some fuzzy ambience before diving once more into a broken-beat extravaganza just rife with intimidation. Clark manages to tie it up nicely with the seven-and-a-half minute “The Autumnal Crush”, and while it can't beat “Matthew” in terms of pure power, its ghostly marriage of crushing melody and whisper-like micronoise is a more than satisfactory end to the album. If anything, it leaves the listener in a state of awe, maybe even sadness.
But Clark's polite dismantling of his musical siblings is more than just one-upsmanship. Indeed, the melancholia and wavering strength erupting from Body Riddle are indicative of Clark's strength at knitting together the best bits of electronic music—the go-with-the-flow tenets of Four-Tetism, the bravado of J Dilla, the breaks of Squarepusher, the lonely beauty of BoC and the ever-present backbone of Aphex Twin's influence. There's a reason [adult swim] utilizes this album often for its bumps. Just as the late-night block's bumps reveal emotions you might not normally 'see' in an image, Body Riddle will open the world around you and infuse everything with colossal meaning and possibility. Listen to this record in the car, while walking or running, on an airplane—it doesn't matter, as long as you're moving and you've got sights to see. As long as the suggestive influence of Body Riddle is pouring into your ears, and you observe your surroundings carefully, you'll find Clark's imposing masterwork shaping into a narrative.
Allow me to go “Big Picture” here and say that when it comes to music, I feel it should sync up with the world around us and reveal things we might normally ignore—toys on the side of the road, factories long since destitute, and people who seem down on their luck. With the impressive arsenal he utilizes on, Chris Clark proves that he's more of a storyteller than a musician by providing a voice to scenes and images whose timbres may have long gone flat. And what more can we ask for an album that, amazingly, clocks in at just forty-three minutes? If there's any meaning to the title, than it's in the album's length—because, really, how does one person manage to emote so much in so little? Otherwise, there's no riddle at all to be found on Body Riddle——it will solve the puzzles all around you, and give everything a song to sing.
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