CLOWN CORE - Van
Get in the Van
Written by: Tom Wilson - Sense Music Media
In March 2018, a bizarre video started popping up on social media. Two people in clown masks and overalls crammed into a portaloo with a drum set, keyboard and saxophone, pounding out a jarring concoction of avant-garde jazz, breakbeats, grind vocals, synths and clown horns. The filtered, scorched vocals are so indecipherable that the lyrics are displayed onscreen with a bouncing ball like a karaoke video. They sound like what happens when you put John Zorn’s PAINKILLER and a DJ into a blender and hit the smoothie button. It has since been viewed more than two million times, and nobody has any idea who they are. All we have is a name, CLOWN CORE.
CLOWN CORE – Hell (Official Music Video)
It turns out that they’ve actually been around since 2010, where they released their self-titled debut. A second LP, Toilet, followed in 2018, and spawned the now infamous portaloo video for the song Hell. Now, there is a new album, and a new member, whose role appears to be driving the band around while wearing a balaclava. Van will probably be the most bewildering and surreal 17 minutes of your entire year (and given the year we’re in, that’s saying something).
CLOWN CORE – Flat Earth (Official Music Video)
Flat Earth combines pounding drums and sinister synths with shrieking saxophone. Song starts with disturbing atmospherics (punctuated by clown honks), before exploding into an utterly sick drum break which fades out just as it takes control of you, giving you rhythm and then taking it from you. The clowns giveth, and the clowns taketh away. You Are Pregnant is like demented polka music for people on amphetamines. Computers is a shuddering, disjointed tumble down a synth-and-drums rabbit hole, before a digitised scream segues into easy-listening 80s sax. Tears of God sounds like it has been lifted from the soundtrack to a 70s porno – plinking keys underscoring a romantic clarinet. Existence swings from tuneful honking to KNOWER-style synths that wouldn’t be out of place in an anime.
End is a beautiful, meditative piece of piano music and atmospherics in the vein of GILES LAMB. It would be the perfect end to the album. But it’s not, so fuck you. Instead, you get one-and-a-half minutes of smooth music-on-hold jazz to make you feel like you’re on the phone to Telstra. Of course, this track is called Infinite Realm of Incomprehensible Suffering.
If it sounds confusing, that’s because it is, but somehow it works. Deranged free-form musical expression that, like FANTOMAS’ Suspended Animation, demands to be listened to in its entirety, CLOWN CORE are two supremely talented musicians masked by a gimmick (one that has worked flawlessly). Maybe, in this bizarre year, an avant-garde jazz album by two anonymous clowns makes perfect sense.
The Verdict
Surreal music for surreal times, this is an insane clown posse that I can get behind. I cannot stop listening to it. Get it and get weird.
9/10
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Pictured: Van Album Cover