It’s been a moment since Essen-based duo Clavis released an EP on their mother label Freerange Records. But in these strange times latter has come and Manuel Tur and Adrian Hoffmann, the artists behind the Clavis moniker, release an absolute non-obsolete three tracker on Jimpster’s imprint, namely Wirefire. The EP is the duo’s first full release after their Boyd EP, which was out in February last year. In-between Tur and Hoffmann caught the scene’s attention and recognition with their remarkable remix approach for Ane Brun’s track Balloon Ranger on These Eyes, which was on heavy rotation in most DJ-sets and as genre-defining as their debut release Banza from 2015 on Freerange Records. With their current Wirefire EP Clavis take the same line yet musically do things differently. The release and its three tracks portray three opposing (musical) approaches, which can be linked by the music’s general and artists’ generic vibe. Tur and Hoffmann stand for euphoric-seemingly classy and deeper House moments, sometims paying more attention to rhythmic elements, sometimes paying more attention to chord-sequences, still and not by any means delivering an arbitrary sound but rather one that subtly unfolds its power when distracted by either one of the aforementioned and more obvious Clavis-track-characteristics. To sum it up, you are lured into the track in the most classy way and bound to it even more classy. However, the EP’s title track Wirefire is no exception. Probably the darkest take on the EP Wirefire comes in with a bouncey still lush bass line with a creaking synth-tone that’s subtly omnipresent and smoothly introduces the listener, in an avant-garde manner, to what is yet to come: a serious synth-space-inferno, which generates an oscillation at the same pitch as the tone of it is endlessly held before an almost cinnematic dark-twisted-alien-moment interlude leads the listener skilfully back to the driving basic-loop and the cracking synth. Latter receives a short special treatment from Tur and Hoffmann during the last third of the track and reminds one what ties us to Clavis’ productions: obvious and subtile class and understanding of how to use drums and synths in an appropriate and outstanding way.
Clavi’s EP Wirefire will be released on Freerange Records on April 24th, 2020.
Torture the Artist 