Latitude 2015 Clarence Clarity talks Latitude 2015: “if I never do another thing again, then I’ve done something with my life”

“We left half our equipment at the last gig we did, so we didn’t have the best of starts,” Clarence Clarity begins. “But it was good!”

Having brought his unique brand of electronic music to a new lease of life on the Lake stage, he’s ready to kick back and find out what the remainder of the festival holds. “We’ve pitched up, started drinking already… I want to go swim in the lake, but it’s the sort of thing I’d want to do late at night when all inhibitions have gone. Right now, I don’t know if the world’s quite ready for me yet.”

Four months on from the release of his debut album ‘No Now’, the London-based artist is every bit as passionate about it as the day it was finally completed. “I just wanted to make a record that made me feel like if I never do another thing again, then I’ve done something with my life. Something that I can look back on from some deathbed somewhere in the future and be like “yeah, you know what? I didn’t compromise, and that was a cool thing that happened.”

Unabashedly characteristic, Clarence Clarity’s has been a long time in the making. “When I started doing this project I think the only way that I could really get my head around it was to approach it as an album right from the start,” he explains. “The EP’s were more of an introduction to the album that I knew would come further down the line, rather than stand alone things. Twenty tracks in length, there’s no shirking the venture he took on in creating it. “I figured the best way to introduce people to the album would be through some bite-sized chunks before hand. This whole period has been about just one record, just introduced slowly.”

Interpreting the record live, like he did to festival audiences today, was a mammoth task. “I though it would be quite difficult. I held back for a long time. I didn’t want to just play live for the sake of it. But I think it makes it feel more real - it’s a real thing when you go and play it live, you can actually vibe off other people’s energy and that kind of thing. So it’s an important thing that I wanted to do.” Loaded with samples and primed with electronic rhythms, in a live setting Clarence Clarity’s music is a very different beast. “The album probably feels quite alien - and deliberately so, I wanted it to just be completely unique. It’s still weird as fuck. But there’s something quite exciting in a real world scenario. I don’t want it to feel like people have come to a gig and they’re just watching the record that they could be listening to at home. I have no time for that.”

Check out photos of Clarence Clarity live at Latitude 2015 in our Friday photo gallery here.