The history of music is full of artists who have cultivated a certain mythos around themselves and their work. Whether it’s Aphex Twin’s legends of buying bank vaults and driving into parked vehicles in an armoured car, or Sun Ra’s cosmic mythology and claims to hail from Saturn – creating and feeding a lore around yourself rarely hurts.
Enter Elijah Minnelli, a UK dub producer with a studied sense of mystery around him and a story about hailing from a fictional locale called Breadminster – or something. When you strip back the slightly try-hard quirkiness of the image, what you have is a producer creating a highly inventive and often psychedelic take on dub that draws elements of folk and other genres into its heady brew. After a string of singles dropped since 2019, his full-length debut Perpetual Musket was a conceptual dub reimagining of folk songs. Now, he follows up with Clams As a Main Meal, which will be sure to please existing fans, while pushing his sound into new territories.
Album opener ‘Canaan Land’ marries the laid-back but detailed reggae lilt of Minelli’s instrumental with sweet ear-worm vocals from Barbadian legend Dennis Bovell. The switch up from this piece to ‘Sumptuous Promise’, a spacious and trippy instrumental equipped with classic dub echoes and looping treated percussion, is a genius turn.
Minelli’s attention to the flow of an album, is one of the many strengths of Clams As A Main Meal. Just when it feels like you have a measure of his sound palette, he throws in a sonic curveball to mix things up – be it the charming melody of the wordless vocals on ‘Watercraft Apologist’ or the ear-grabbing and spacey synth textures and rattling low key breakbeat of ‘Calopify Now!’.
Among the myriad weird and wonderful sonic detours that Minelli goes on, the addition of Welsh language vocals from Pretenders member and Edwyn Collins collaborator Carwyn Ellis on ‘Donna Donna (Chwerthin)’ is maybe one of the more surprising. But as with many other moments on this record, Minelli is able to skilfully take something unexpected and blend it into his own idiosyncratic milieu to great effect.
Having existed for a number of years as a quirky and intriguing figure on the UK underground, Clams… broadens Minelli’s potential appeal and deepens his own highly individual take on dub production. Whether or not someone buys into the lore, there’s a huge amount of melodic charm, sonic invention and detail to keep listeners coming back for more. The only question that remains is where his singular path will lead him next.
