Spotlight On... Clair

Last summer Hot Gem label boss Clair Crawford released her debut album, Earth Mothers, as Clair. It was a glorious collection of field recordings, found sounds and hushed vocals which, when all pieced together, made for a wholly healing and rejuvenating listen. This month, Clair released brand new single Body Blossom, this time using field recordings from the Yucatan Jungle, recorded by her friend, photographer Andy Maclennan. It's a beautifully ethereal piece of music that, at just over three minutes long, feels like it's over far too soon.

To celebrate its release, we shine a spotlight on Clair to find more about her and her processes, and even hear from Maclennan about the single's accompanying music video, which you can watch in the above YouTube player (click here if it's not displaying correctly).

We loved your debut album last year, and the same can be said of your latest single Body Blossom. What is it that has drawn you to this musique concrete/found sounds style of music-making? Who/what has inspired you?
I’ve been slightly obsessed with field recordings for decades. Well before I made music I’d read in a magazine about a producer/DJ who cut about places like NYC recording sounds, I can’t say for certain as it was so long ago, but I think it was someone like Justin Robertson, who you wouldn’t really associate with this kind of music, but is in his own way an experimentalist – my little mind was blown at the idea of using sounds you could just find in the street to make music.

I was always trying to pester my partner at the time, who was a producer, into using field recordings, he wasn’t so into it though. Thinking even further back, I was a kid who just loved being outside, just a daydreamer really who was fascinated by plants, insects, birds, water, animals and sounds. My happy place was at the bottom of the wild part of the garden or on a farm I used to frequent with my dad.

In 2013 I started learning transcendental meditation. I can’t remember the exact date, but I think a couple of years after learning it I meditated for many hours, I started to hear every sound in the building and around it blend into a piece of music, I also started to hallucinate. I knew then at some point I’d make something with sound. When the pandemic happened, I started spending a lot of time in the park, I was also microdosing and I was hand-feeding birds, and recording them – it got to the stage [where] we had a sort of communication. It just felt natural to start producing again using my field recordings, with no pressure on me.

I’m pretty lucky in that I have some very talented music cats around me including Keith from Optimo, plus Stuart Mclean who runs The Dark Outside. Part of the reason I made my first track was Stuart’s call-out for music for his experimental festival; both have been an inspiration for my work, coupled with support from friends Will and Finlay. 

During lockdown I bought a keyboard, and dug out some more percussion bits I had lying around that I’d picked up while travelling that I had only really used as ornaments previously, also Stuart gifted me a tiny synth and an organ – bless him. Earth Mothers just started flowing out of me, and I could see the music as images in my mind when I was working on it, a sort of synesthesia, I guess.

Aside from the field recordings and nature, I am also inspired by a lot of film scores – Ennio Morricone, Georges Delerue, Angelo Badalamenti, Carter Burwell, Vangelis, Clint Mansell and many more. As for Body Blossom, Yucatan field recordings [from my friend Andy Maclennan] were initially the inspiration for that, plus the light and energy of a faraway muse at the other end of the country who I think about and inspires me a lot.

Image: Clair by Clair

How did this collaboration with your friend Andy come about? What was it like creating Body Blossom from someone else’s recordings?
I knew Andy from back in the early 2000s when I was a heavy Optimo frequenter. Andy was one of the cool kids that everyone loved, but he was also one of the least pretentious and most endearing. We were party pals, I guess. He eventually left Glasgow to go live in the US, finally settling in San Francisco. We hadn’t spoken in some time, it’s hard to keep up with everyone.

He got in touch out of the blue not long after Earth Mothers had come out, said he was studying film, and that he loved the LP, and asked if he could make a video for me at some point. He’d also been filming birds and wildlife in the Yucatan in Mexico, so it made perfect sense for us to collaborate. I asked him if he’d recorded any sound when he was there and he had, once I finally got around to listening to those recordings, I was like yasssss, I’m gonna create some magick out of these; I can feel this world from these recordings, I wanna toy with those noises, and bring this cosmos to people through my own energy and present my vision of it, if that makes sense.

It was an absolute joy being able to use sounds that are different and native to another part of the planet, it would be a dream to do some sort of exchange with another field recording artist from a different part of the world.

Body Blossom is a beautiful and super relaxing piece of music – what was the end goal for the piece? What do you hope people take away from it?
This planet is beautiful, look after the earth and its inhabitants, it needs protecting, we’re all connected, stop destroying life for stuff we don’t need.

The song is also accompanied by some quite astonishing footage captured in the Yucatan Jungle – can you tell us more about this?
Andy Maclennan: The visuals were taken near Celestun on the west coast of the Yucatan where there’s a nature reserve, so many flamingos in the wild! The noises were all recorded about an hour inland from there in the jungle.

Finally, with a new single out does that mean there’s more to come from Clair in 2022? What’s next for you?
First up I have a remix package of Body Blossom coming out in a few weeks, from modular synth wizard Polypores, and Edinburgh-based modern classical artist Euan Dalgarno – both are massively talented. I’m gonna try and do an extended version of Body Blossom. I’m then working on a visual and field recording project, if my funding applications go to plan, which will hopefully also encompass a new LP. 

Next year I have a track on a compilation for this really amazing overseas label with a bunch of legendary experimental acts. It's a bit frustrating it's taking a while, but the vinyl crisis is a pain in the tits and causes so much delay now. I’ve been asked to play some live sets, but I’ve not had time to work on the set just yet, so either late this year or early next year for live. I’d ideally love to do it with a bunch of properly trained classical artists; who knows what might happen, nothing would surprise me, life feels pretty bizarre right now.

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Earth Mothers and Body Blossom are out now via Hot Gem; Listen to Clair's monthly radio show Sonic book club on CAMP Radio

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