Clast - Tell ME A Story

Clast

Tell Me A Story
self-released; 2015

3.3 out of 5

By Jamie Robash

Clast is the collaborative concept effort of three members; Morland, Fi Ro, and Chimi. The trio collaborates from a distance, with members in both Sacramento and Oklahoma City. Clast’s debut is the four-song EP Tell Me a Story. According to the band Tell Me a Story was recorded in both Oklahoma City and Sacramento in small home studios and took nearly a year to complete.  

In many ways Tell Me a Story is just as fragmentary as Clast’s name. Each of the EP’s four songs seems in many ways incomplete. Somewhere along the way Clast picked up the idea that using found samples and ironic bits of dialogue taken from movies would help them say what they were looking to say. Clast states that all four of the songs on Tell Me a Story “all relate to forms of being understood or communicating to gain understanding.” The irony here is two-fold. First of all the samples only really act as a filler and are only really there to call attention to themselves. Although even more ironic is the fact that you are using someone else’s words to try and describe your own feelings, which really doesn’t make them your own. 

The longest song on the EP “Get Through” opens with a woman saying “something separates me from other people,” and then the song slowly begins to emerge, dark and foreboding at first, and then moving into a more upbeat funk driven sound with looped drums and carnival sounding organs. There are vocals, which at times are mumbled and sound separated from the instruments. 

However “Felt the Same Way” is a stripped down and disparaging piece of pop, reminiscent of a band like Portishead. It is here, as the EP’s title is sung by both male and female vocals, over the eerie and drawn out violins that one hears the potential that exists within Clast. One also hears this on the closing track “Trade Hours” with its slightly hip-hop and hypnotic mix of sounds and rhythms. 

If Clast were to make a full length, they would have to diversify their sound a bit, as people will listen to an EP and accept the fact that the few songs are similar sounding. However for an entire album, people are generally less forgiving. 

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