Clams erodes vocals with waves of reverb and decay, like choirs crying with their mouths sewn shut, but the sample here sings out with a euphoric clarity. There’s no smeared eyeliner or guest appearances from Robert Smith, but it’s easy to see Clams as a slightly more uptempo kin to Salem and Pictureplane, not just in the general chilliness of his sound, but in the strong gothic undertone to his early work-that aesthetic sense of haute morbidity is maybe most evident on “Unchain Me,” an instrumental from Lil B’s I’m Gay (I’m Happy) that flips “Cry Little Sister,” Gerard McMann’s theme from The Lost Boys. For all its innovation and ethereality, there’s something timeless about “I’m God,” with drum programming that skews more boom-bap than trap, betraying Clams’ roots in New Jersey and his love of the East Coast’s classics - one of his first collaborations was with Havoc of Mobb Deep.Ĭlams Casino emerged around the same time as witch house, a phenomenon his ectoplasm-laced compositions were often linked to. Like Clams’ most haunting work, it decays and disintegrates inside your eardrum, more like a Burial composition than what you’d normally expect to hear Soulja Boy rapping over-the kind of thing I wish Mark Fisher had gotten to write about. “I’m God” was instantly iconic, immediately imitated, and impossible to recreate.

The instrumental’s unforgettable sample has gone from an unapproved flip to a full-fledged feature, with Imogen Heap credited alongside Clams Casino. Most were previously available and have only been remastered here, but “I’m God”-the definitive Clams Casino recording-can now be officially streamed as a standalone piece of music for the very first time. Instrumental Relics contains many of Clams’ most notable early collaborations (Soulja Boy’s “All I Need,” A$AP Rocky’s “Numb”), as well as three tracks from his Rainforest EP on the late Tri Angle records (“Treetop,” “Drowning,” “Gorilla”), an original cut from the Grand Theft Auto V soundtrack (“Crystals”), and a handful of other strays. Clams was out there sampling Thursday in 2011, and now he works alongside a new generation who would probably not be making music without his influence: Lil Peep, Wicca Phase Springs Eternal, Ghostemane, and Nedarb, who credits “I’m God” as the beat that made him want to start producing. Without Clams, it’s hard to imagine Yung Lean or Drain Gang, and rap’s ongoing infatuations with the alternative rock spectrum might not be so passionate either. Clams’ influence on hip-hop has remained at the elemental level his work with rappers like Lil B, A$AP Rocky, and Soulja Boy truly shifted the sonic window.

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