Clams casino genius

Photo courtesy of Clams Casino on Instagram

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Staley Sharples is a talented DJ and a generous tipper.

Soft-spoken and unassuming, Clams Casino ruminates on the song he’s had stuck in his head—the Lin-Manuel Miranda-penned Disney hit, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” is “the number one right now at our house.” One might not immediately imagine one of the most influential producers in hip hop as a dad driving on the New Jersey turnpike to the Encanto soundtrack, but the family man’s humble demeanor and passion for his craft belie his notoriety as a defining beatmaker of a generation.

The cloud rap pioneer born Michael Volpe recounts his early career hustle where he would send “20 beats to every email I had,” pulling contact information off artists’ MySpace pages in the hopes a placement might land. Eventually, lightning struck with the most inscrutable seer of the skinny jeans era, Lil B. Samples of Imogen Heap and Adele were warped and woven into the fabric of tracks like “I’m God” and “Realist Alive,” muddled by textural ephemera and zany flows from the Based God. A murky new style was born; dubbed “cloud rap,” Clams Casino’s beats of this time were permeated by classic coastal hip hop, moody lo-fi textures, and the endlessly branching growth of Internet culture.

A young rapper from New York took note of the ghostly aura around Clams Casino’s output, rapping over the hypnotic instrumentals before the producer ever reached out to collaborate. Together, the two would create five tracks for Live.Love.A$AP, A$AP Rocky’s 2011 mixtape that pushed the cloud rap sound to the forefront of hip hop. The emerging genre grabbed ahold and firmly steered the musical direction of the 2010s; every rapper wanted a beat that played like it was enshrouded in a thick fog of Purple Kush and unfathomable depression. Following the success of Live.Love.A$AP, Clams Casino went from sending unanswered emails into the ether to fielding requests from Mac Miller, The Weeknd, FKA twigs, and Vince Staples to work.

The apex of this sound was realized in Clams Casino’s only major label release, 32 Levels. With a name lifted from the lyrics of his breakout hit “I’m God” with early supporter Lil B, 32 Levels is scattered with features from the aforementioned rapper, as well as collaborators old and new. The essence of the Clams Casino aesthetic is distilled in the aptly named “Ghost in a Kiss,” featuring Samuel T. Herring of Future Islands. Undercut by wistful piano chords, the drums sweep like crashing waves as the memory-faded baritone rattle of Herring’s voice plunges into a black hole of the howling unknown.

This darkly emotive sound aided the transition into Volpe’s next projects, such as the cigarette-stained, emo-guitar sludge of Spider Web, his 2018 EP with Wicca Phase Springs Eternal. Volpe’s path continued to push him into the orbit of fellow innovators, touching the discographies of late rapper Lil Peep, 88rising star Joji, experimental R&B vocalist serpentwithfeet, grime emcee Flohio, and Tumblr princess Lana Del Rey.

Volpe’s 2019 mixtapes found him traversing the long road back to where it began, sharing selections of instrumentals from his vast collection of beats. Whether he’s emphasizing the use of naturalistic sounds in the immersive Rainforest, or peering into the reflective pool of nostalgia in Moon Trip Radio, Volpe likes to keep his listeners engaged in the emotion behind the music. “My expression is kind of like that, the sounds and things that I’m interested in, using textures and sound design and the motion in the music—that’s what I put out.”

Clams Casino’s latest album Winter Flower is a collaboration with Jazztronik, the free-form brainchild of prolific Japanese musician Ryota Nozaki. Nozaki first made his name as a Nu Jazz pioneer with his long-running Jazztronica!! house parties at The Room in Shibuya. There, he enthralled audiences with his enigmatic hybrid of electronic elements integrated into traditional Japanese sounds, all professed through his jazz keyboard. Leading his fluctuating multi-member project Jazztronik, Nozaki has released 14 full-length instrumental projects throughout his nearly 30-year career.

Winter Flower sprouted in the fertile grounds of an email inbox. Nozaki initially reached out with original recordings of his own cleared samples, encouraging Clams Casino to utilize them in whatever way he found inspiring. The samples immediately caught Clams’ attention; “I listened through and made one idea, or one and a half ideas a day, and it came really quickly, which is not [the] usual for me. I was a little surprised by that, but I kept going [to] see where it would take me.” The music continued to flow from the New Jersey producer, who created the entirety of Winter Flower during the initial pandemic lockdown.

Following its release in late 2021, the two artists once again traded samples and stems to deconstruct the album into a more ambient, new age soundtrack for the meditation app Calm. This turned into Winter Flower Reimagined, Ryota Nozaki’s reworked vision of the inceptive project. “He’s sampling me sampling him, so it was like a back and forth, full circle [moment],” Clams explained. This causal loop in his artistic output hones in on where Clams started—digging around for interesting music on the Internet, unearthing new styles from unlikely sources through extensive recontextualization of samples.

Our conversation unpacks Clams’ discography, along with his creative philosophy after nearly two decades in the industry. What truly makes Clams Casino’s catalog timeless is not just the accolades and awards, but his steady growth and love for creation itself. In acting in service of the process, and letting life inform the work, his music transcends the limits of genre through universal emotion.