Touching Bass’ first label release – from Hiatus Kaiyote’s Clever Austin

It isn’t very often that music can move you to tears while simultaneously making you screw up your face with equal parts confusion and delight.

It isn’t very often that music can move you to tears while simultaneously making you screw up your face with equal parts confusion and delight. Such was my first reaction to hearing this, the debut album from Clever Austin. In a way, the term album seems too restrictive a definition. What he’s constructed feels more like a sonic pilgrimage, too expansive to define by genre because it’s so ripe with emotion, nuance and true artistry plucked from disparate musical universes. It’s the type of music you can see as you listen, if that even makes any sense. 

So you can imagine what it feels like to be entrusted as the platform to share such a project. It’s a true honour to help usher this into the world. It also sets a really strong precedent as to how I envision what the Touching Bass label represents; music that pays homage to past sounds while also boldly aiming forward (or sideways or diagonally) with innovation and personality. Music that makes you think and feel. 

A massive thank you to Clever Austin, all artists involved and Wondercore Island, who are putting out the record in Australasia. Also, a forward thank you to whoever happens to hear what Clever Austin has made; take your time with it and hopefully it will grow on you in the same way it continues to grow on me. We live in an all too disposable world where a week means a piece of music can already be old news. Let’s remember the efforts of the artist who, in this case, has spent over three years sculpting a moodboard for your ears and heart. 

Feel free to share your thoughts and feelings with us at Touching Bass, we’d be glad to share our experiences with Pareidolia.

Listen to the debut album from self-taught, multi-instrumentalist producer and Hiatus Kaiyote drummer, Clever Austin (aka Perrin Moss) here

Explore more

21.03.19
What happens when the people at the bottom of the empire tell the story?
15.03.19
Skin Deep meets Palestinian singer, songwriter and rapper Maysa Daw