New Jersey producer Clams Casino has worked with a who’s who of contemporary rap music, from his cult collaborations with Lil B to his team-ups with A$AP Rocky, Mac Miller, The Weeknd, Joji, Flohio, and more. Still, for a generation of music fans, he’s equally well-known for his run of game-changing instrumental mixtapes in the early 2010s, which introduced the world to a uniquely atmospheric and emotional style of beatmaking that seemed to owe as much to ambient and drone music as it did hip hop. Those mixtapes went on to inspire a generation of musicians, whether in subgenres like ‘cloud rap’ or later the ‘emo rap’ sound of artists like Wicca Phase Springs Eternal or the late Lil Peep – both of whom have Clams Casino collaborations to their name.

Where his official debut album, 2016’s 32 Levels, featured vocal contributions from artists like Kelela and Vince Staples, Clams Casino’s new full-length Moon Trip Radio is an entirely instrumental album, evoking his classic solo mixtapes in its coarse textures while still building on the newer ideas he’s been exploring in recent few years. Following the album’s release last week, we spoke to the producer to learn more about what was passing through his head during the year-and-a-half timespan he spent creating it.

WICCA PHASE SPRINGS ETERNAL

Clams Casino: I was listening to Lil Peep’s music a lot. He (Wicca Phase) was popping up here and there in Peep’s music, so I started checking it out from there and getting more into it, and trying to dig a little bit to hear more. I posted something up online about listening to it a lot, and he hit me back from there and told me that the first thing that he ever recorded under the Wicca Phase name was a remix of one of my songs. It was an “I’m God” remix. I had no idea about that, I was just listening to and inspired by him. It’s crazy – like, full circle. People take what they take from my music and do their own thing, and then that inspires me back without even knowing about it. 

His voice is very distinct, so that brought me in, his sense of melody and what he does vocally. There are emotional qualities to his music that I was attracted to. With my music, I always try to get to the types of feelings that I hear in his music too. This stuff is not really conscious – I was just listening to him a bunch at the time, so I guess it was maybe coming out somehow.

JOJI

Clams Casino: It was a little different with Joji. It was the same thing where I was listening to his music a lot during the during the process, but the thing that I took away from him was more (to do with) production. Working with Joji on his music took me back. His production process is super raw. He’ll record his voice straight into his laptop, no mic in, and then he’ll make beats. This got me back to what I what I used to do, and kind of resetting – I should be doing what I what I naturally would do, which is not making anything too pretty. Texturally, I took a lot from Joji’s production.

LORD OF THE RINGS

Clams Casino: I read the books for the first time while I was doing the album. I watched the movies in between, and listened to the soundtrack a lot. The whole world is super immersive, I just got wrapped up in that. There’s a lot of mystery, and the music has a lot of that same kind of mysterious vibe. The score is by Howard Shore, and he worked with Enya on it, so there are a lot of really beautiful vocals. There’s a really good song at the end of the Fellowship soundtrack called “May It Be” by Enya that I listened to a lot. So it was kind of the whole world of the book and the soundtrack and the movies over a long period of time while I was writing. I was kind of in the middle of all that, so I think that maybe came out somehow. 

(My music has) got mystery, that’s one of the main things I try to do. Creating the whole project was really like creating a whole world. With the book, I kind of got that feeling – you’re really in it, it’s really its own place – so I wanted the music to be like that.

FILM SCORES

Clams Casino: I’d be driving around, listening to scores from kids’ movies that I’m playing my son to try to him go to sleep. He’ll be sleeping, and I’ll be listening to it and starting to listen to what’s going on. Like in Moana, there’s this beautiful Polynesian music on there, and a lot of vocal stuff. He loves that movie, so I’ve been playing that a thousand times a day. There are other movies too, one is called The Good Dinosaur, a Disney movie. All that stuff I’ll be playing for him and then I’m starting to get deeper in myself.

I feel like if I did (make film soundtracks), I would love to do something with Enya, because I’ve sampled her work a lot and I’d love to actually work with her. I don’t what type of movie (my soundtrack would be for), but I know it’ll happen someday, and I know it’ll fit right, whenever the time is right. My music is definitely cinematic, I think at some point it’s gonna happen.

MARIUSZ LEWANDOWSKI

Clams Casino: I came across one or two of his paintings online and looked into it more and found a bunch of other stuff. Visually, it’s very surreal, but it’s also pretty heavy and intense. Looking at that stuff, I automatically got some kind of crazy feeling that I feel somehow ties into the music that I make. That was something that visually stuck out as something that can maybe relate to the music. I think a lot of metal metal bands have reached out to him to do original works and stuff – it makes sense. I haven’t reached out to him, but maybe there’s something that can be done down the road.

THE UKELELE

Clams Casino: During the writing process of the album, when my son was three months old, I bought (a ukelele) to learn some stuff to play for him. Just little things, like those movies – I started teaching myself stuff from the soundtracks, like Moana and all the other ones I was talking about. It was a way to learn music that’s already written. I never normally want to do that, but I had the urge to do that when I was writing, I guess to just wind down in-between writing my own music. Looking back, it was a really important process of winding my brain down – you know, playing other people’s music, not creating it. I got it early last year, and I’ve been using it a lot since. I’ve sampled it a lot and made some beats out of it, but nothing on this album I don’t think.