Manchester techno/house producer Mark ‘Claro Intelecto’ Stewart is set to release a new album, Reform Club, on 16th April. His first full-length since 2008’s remarkable Metanarrative, it finds him parting company with long-running label Modern Love to release on Amsterdam-based label Delsin.
Reform Club follows on from Claro’s excellent recent Second Blood EP, which we reviewed here. In a similar vein to the recent work of many of his Manchester friends and contemporaries – Andy Stott, G.H, Demdike Stare – the album finds him often slowing tempos slightly and rubbing an extra layer of grit into his tracks. However, the music on Reform Club still has a grace and sense of openness that’s notably lacking from Stott’s recent ‘knackered house’ music, which retreated into dark, murky and claustrophobic spaces. In fact, it’s frequently more openly beautiful and emotionally engaging than much of his older music, whose sheer weight and intensity felt more at home in dank warehouse spaces than on headphones.
Reform Club instead feels comfortable with both. Even after initial listens, it could well prove just as important a crossover record for Manchester’s Modern Love extended family this year as Demdike Stare and Andy Stott were in 2010 and 2011.
Reform Club is released on 16th April through Delsin
