How this Nutley artist became New Jersey's latest music pioneer (original) (raw)

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Nutley native Mike Volpe, better known as alternative hip-hop artist Clams Casino, has become one of the most coveted rhythm designers in America. (Nick Griffiths)

HASBROUCK HEIGHTS -- It's no secret -- the rave has crashed and flooded popular music.

Thumping electronic-dance influences are prominent in nearly all of 2016's ubiquitous hits, from Rihanna "Work," to Justin Bieber's "Sorry," to a list of jams from The Chainsmokers, the latest DJ group to explode on pop charts.

Even more undeniable was 2014's Grammy Awards, where DJ duo Daft Punk -- once dignitaries of the cultish French house movement -- scored Album of the Year.

Pop's resident rock acts Maroon 5 and Coldplay have joined in, too, trading guitar and piano leads for samples and synthesizers. If brassy synth and screaming guitars defined the '80s mainstream, then plunking, pulsating basslines are surely commanding the 2010s.

The EDM bleed has paid dividends for Mike Volpe, a Nutley native better known as Clams Casino, who has become one of the most sought-after digital designers in hip-hop's experimental universe.

The 29-year-old producer's dark, dreamy, and originally instrumental tracks have led him to collaborations with rap stars Vince Staples and ASAP Rocky, as well as millions of streams online, where his style -- a bridge between hip-hop and house music sometimes labeled as "cloud rap" or "trillwave" -- thrives on YouTube and Soundcloud.

And even though his spacey genre is defined by its accessibility, where any hopeful with a laptop and taste for beat-making software -- about as pricey as a decent guitar and amplifier -- can post tunes online and find a following, Volpe is levels above. The artist signed to Columbia Records in 2014, and joined a major label roster that claims many of the world's electronic powerhouses --Daft Punk, Calvin Harris, MGMT and Krewella.

Most "cloud rappers" don't make it off their desk chairs.

"It's great, how easy it is to get stuff out, and make music at home and all the sudden people everywhere can hear it," he says, from his home in Hasbrouck Heights. "It's an exciting time."

Volpe released "32 Levels," his debut LP on Columbia, this summer. On the album, he chose to serve his deep-fried beats two ways.

First, he presents his tracks conventionally, with artists as eclectic as R&B crooner Nikky Ekko and synthpop frontman Samuel T. Herring singing over a dozen of his ominous, droning rhythms.

But right where the record finishes, on the last, explosive dubs of his closing tune "Blast," it begins again -- the track list plays over, this time with all vocals removed.

"There are many details in the music that I spend a lot of time on, and I want to make sure people hear that, too," he says. "Plus, they can mix and match the songs, and make their own version of the album."

The Nutley High School grad first began to tinker with beats as a teen, fooling around with basic keyboards and synthesizers, much simpler ones than the machines now scattered around his basement home studio.

But there was no "aha" moment in embracing a style as obscure as atmospheric alt-rap, he says. He always loved hip-hop, and between delivering pizzas and stocking shelves around town, he found more intricate software, like his go-to beat program Sony ACID Pro.

When his mix tapes, namely his eye-opening "Rainforest" EP, began to take off in 2011 -- just as he was finishing a physical therapist's assistant program at Essex County College -- he received requests to play, but was afraid the pre-recorded songs wouldn't translate live.

"I couldn't figure out how to do it ... would I just bring up my iPad and play it off the iPad, and then I feel stupid just standing there?" he says. "But I'm at the point where I enjoy it, I do some controlling, DJing the beats, getting deeper into it, and bring other artists out with me."

Volpe recently returned from a European headlining tour, filling clubs in Moscow and Poland, and jamming with live audiences he had previously avoided. He's heading to Australia and Asia early next year.

The New York Times checked out his show in 2011, praising it as "garbled and maddening and also intoxicating." More recently, Pitchfork said his album was "uniformly strong rap side."

All of this could suggest Volpe to simply be king of the computer, and somehow less than a true musician. But all those haunting, ambient percussion parts on "32 Levels" come not from a bag of sample clips but from Volpe's real taps on a real drum kit.

He records about 45 minutes of his own freestyle playing -- he messed around in more traditional rock bands as a teen -- then passes the sounds through guitar and warp pedals, tweaking levels as he goes, to create original drum samples, instead of the revamped soul or R&B fills some hip-hop artists lean on.

Even when Volpe is commissioned to create an "official remix" for Sia, Florence and the Machine, or Lana Del Rey -- sanctioned by the stars themselves -- he uses none of the hit's original music. All he takes is the singer's vocal track, and he rebuilds the song from the foundation, morphing Sia's smash "Elastic Heart" into something metallic, even tragic in tone.

Still, in the space Volpe occupies -- somewhere between the abstract, heavily digitized hip-hop of Danny Brown or Travis Scott, and the entrancing underground electronica of Flying Lotus or Groundislava -- he is celebrated most for his tracks in their purest forms.

"No matter what I put out, people hit me up for the instrumental version," he says.

It's been this way for five years -- a veritable lifetime online -- and now, despite his major label debut album dropping just this year, Volpe is something of an elder statesman in the scene. Emerging producers like Chicago's Plu2o Nash and New York's MP Williams work to emulate the moody "Clams Casino sound."

"I can hear (my music) in their music, but they flip it and do their own thing with it, not just copying it. That's exciting for me," he says. "And it's full circle, me being inspired by them, by how they are using what I do. I love to hear it."

Bobby Olivier may be reached at bolivier@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @BobbyOlivier. Find NJ.com on Facebook

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