Beats Antique- Nesatavo

Fairly new and highly explosive on the electronic music scene is San Francisco based music trio Beats Antique. Their sound offers a very unique blend of electronic and hip-hop beats infused with Middle Eastern ethnic melodies. Similar to Calle 13, the clarinet sound used by Beats Antique is very wild and unrefined, and capitalizes on its ethnic qualities. The group uses clarinet extensively on each of their albums, much to the same effect as in the example featured below. In fact, they have so many tracks prominently featuring the clarinet that it was extremely difficult for me to pick just one!



Sources: About Beats Antique (n.d.). beatsantique.com. Retrieved from http://beatsantique.com/bio/.

Calle 13- Atreve Te, Te

Native to Puerto Rico, Calle 13 uses the clarinet in this composition, hearkening to their Latin roots. Their music is a contemporary blend of mariachi, reggae, Latin, and Caribbean music, commonly labeled as Reggaeton. The featured clarinet has a very peculiar tone color, sounding as if it almost could be a soprano saxophone. As we know, the clarinet has a wide range of possible sounds and colors, and often serves different purposes in multicultural music. In Latin music, clarinetists are much more wild with their sound, and create a very spread tone quality. In typical Western performance, however, we prefer a clarinet sound that is concentrated and highly controlled. This sound is achieved my raising the tongue in the mouth, creating a concentrated pathway for the air to travel from the mouth to the instrument. But the clarinetist performing in this piece sounds as if his tongue and jaw a dropped very low, thus producing a wider sound.

This video contains explicit lyrics and visual content:



Sources:

Calle 13 (n.d.). LastFM. Retrieved from http://www.last.fm/music/Calle+13.

Fantastic Plastic Machine- Black Dada

DJ and Producer Tanaka Tomoyuki, otherwise knows as Fantastic Plastic Machine was a forerunner in the Japanese pop Shibuya-Kei movement of the 1990’s and early 2000’s. Shibuya-Kei is noted for it’s kitschy pop quality, infused with electronic sounds, hip-hop beats, and many lounge and bossa nova samples. If you have never heard Shibuya-Kei before, I can think of no other song that perfectly embodies the genre. Fantastic Plastic Machine uses the Bb clarinet in this recording, to produce a lounge-jazz sound. Throughout this piece, the clarinet plays mostly in the chalumeau and low clarion registers, with a very velvety tone. Interspersed are blips of higher clarinet tones that add a sense of J-pop quirkiness. There are many different sonic layers to this track that build as it progresses. Listen carefully andyou can hear the smooth sound of the clarinet the entire way through.



Sources:

Fantastic Plastic Machine. (n.d.). Discogs. Retrieved from http://www.discogs.com/artist/Fantastic+Plastic+Machine.

Fantastic Plastic Machine. (n.d.). LastFM. Retrieved from http://www.last.fm/music/Fantastic+Plastic+Machine.