Clams Casino? Clams Casino! Clams. Casino.

No, this is technically not "new".

Yes, my love of all things Clams Casino has been disclosed previously.

No, I'm not going to stop posting Clams Casino tracks. It's my internet and I do what I want.

Seriously though, album of the year? I need a compelling reason to not make it that, and as of early October I don't have one.

It amazes me that these tracks were originally suppose to be used for rappers to rhyme over. No one looks at a Andy Warhol piece and says, "you know what this looks like a good place to start my painting, I'll just start painting on top of this." This isn't an attack on Lil' B for his version, I don't know who out there is going to jump on this track and make it better. Why take something that is already totally fucking awesome and muddy it up with something else. It only distracts the listener from what is already perfect. Great jazz musicians use to talk about how the absence of a note is just as important as the presence of a note - there is an instance where we have the perfect amount of notes, we really don't have to add anymore.

Rarely do producers beats do much for me. Of course you have the outliers, but rarely do I want to just listen to the producer's beats. Clearly, Clams Casino is different than most other producers out there right now and I would venture to say it is because of the space or atmosphere he creates with his songs. "I'm God" is a perfect example of a track that is this mixture of ethereal and airy-ness. When I use the term space I mean it in a literally way - you can feel and hear the spaces in the track. The little moments of silence and hiccups between beats and the vocal track break up the continuity of the the track and add another dimension of depth. The song reminds me a lot of the album cover. What seems to be a close up picture of black marble is really just a visual of the sounds on this album. The cracks in the marble reveal shades of white and gray while the disjointedness of the production breaks open previous ideas of beat making and creates whole new ways of looking at it.

Or I'm thinking about it way to hard and it is just a totally bitching album.