Somewhere between the past and the distant future, sparked by dusty old jazz records and beat generation hip hop, at the sonic cross-roads of Detroit and Vienna, lies a series of sound stories steeping in the head of beat navigator Paul Movahedi, also known as The Clonious.
The Adroit Adventures EP, released on Ubiquity in June, was the first set of tales to exit his studio and hit limited edition wax. It was immediately picked up by the likes of Mary Anne Hobbs (who aired a Clonious mixtape the week of it’s release) and Benji B on BBC Radio. DJs from Helskinki to Tokyo to New York also gave thumbs up to his unique blend of bouncy cosmic vibes and glitchy shoegazer funk. On Between The Dots his debut album, Movehadi continues his development of sounds that are at once new and classic, soulful and striking, organic and electronic.
“If a regular hip-hop head and the biggest IDM nerd both find a track on the album that they like, it would make me happy,” says Movahedi. “The album is the sum of what I like. These tracks are little adventures that just want to say hello,” he jokes.
While “Fogged Spacesuit,” the ideal tune for astronauts on a spacewalk, and the outerworldly soul of “One At A Time,” (featuring DC-based vocalist Muhsinah, and remixed for the album) swell and bump, tracks like “Emora“ are more angular and to the point, building around a focussed theme. Keeping the beats edgy, Movahedi lets the jazz and improv fly between the dots on “If Joe Had The Power,“ and even more on the short “Agenda“ and “Hang On.“ There’s a Herbert-like warmth to the cut n’paste style of the more uptempo “Bugs N’Fools“ and “Leaving Belief“ should please the ears of Jazzanova and Atjazz fans with their floor friendly beats.
“I don’t really care how people explain my music. You will most definitely find references to others, and that’s cool with me,” says Movahedi. “You can’t invent the wheel a second time. It’s about your mix of influences, and with every record I have ever listened to I inhaled a piece of the world. Searching in the past always felt like looking in the future for me. The past and the future have the unknown in common - and I hope I also captured “the jazz” that make this music timeless,” says Movahedi.
Other guests on the album include Dorian Concept and Cid Rim, with whom Movahedi frequently collaborates. Los Angeles-based Georgia Anne Muldrow and partner Dudley Perkins round out the collabs, injecting some of their own brand of West Coast fonk.
Beat generation artists are smashing the boundaries and connections between electronic music and hip hop worldwide, making something new with every release. “I hope to achieve that fine balance between a superficial forcefulness and a striking deepness. I come from a musical background that is heavily influenced by the jazz era of the late 1950s and 1960s. But a big part of my sound is sampling. Everything I record or produce eventually ends up in a sampler. As I see it the art of sampling comes close to a cloning process. So add my love for sampling with my love for old jazz records and the name The Clonious makes sense...I guess!” he adds.
