CLOCK OPERA..."pocket symphonies with a mechanical, repetitious feel"

“They're almost as eccentric as Jackson-as-Jacko. Not that they sleep in hermetically sealed tents and hang around with hominoids, just that their approach to music-making is rather unusual.” 

Clock Opera is really a he: Guy Connelly, who is from London and used to be in bands called The Corrections and The Fall Out Trust and now cuts and dices found sounds and instrumental segments with psychotic finesse. What you imagine to be harp glissandos on tracks such as, Alouette, are actually the noises made by five guitars, "chopped into smithereens and fiddled with sonically and in terms of pitch and rhythm," says Connelly. No wonder he calls what he does "chop pop" – he literally chops up sounds to create songs out of bits. He gets a lot of his percussive effects by rattling whatever happens to be lying around such as cheese graters and old car batteries, or by wandering round his house slamming the cutlery draw.

He chops up his lyrics as well: he finds a story then cuts up the words and reassembles them in a random order that occasionally will make a strange sort of sense after several readings. Man Made, for example, came from an article in a magazine about a beauty pageant in a women's prison in Siberia where one girl from each block got dolled up and played for the chance of parole. And White Noise was a personal reminiscence of the time Connelly was walking down London's Whitechapel Road when a riderless motorbike came careening towards him and nearly sliced him in half. Gives a whole new meaning to his "chop pop" thing, that does.

Connelly's musical passion "pocket symphonies with a mechanical, repetitious feel" and singing in a high-pitched voice over the top. He and his band have only played two shows but already the A&R fraternity are circling, which is encouraging, if experimental groups out there such as Associates and Animal Collective can be counted as "pop", or if the ravishing "systems music" of Philip Glass and Steve Reich are successful why not Connelly. 

Connelly has done remixes for Yeasayer and Bloc Party, he has written scores for the Rambert dance company. Personally one of my favourite tracks is Once and for all, White Noise as well as A Piece of String! Listen....

Link: www.myspace.com/clockopera