Listen to Romanian Producer C L N K’s Decaying Techno EP

Get to know the crumbling sonics of the Bucharest-based artist.

May 05, 2014



FADER PREMIERE

There's a debris-like quality to the music that Romanian producer Silviu Badea makes as C L N K. Sounds crumble into one another, sending sonic artifacts sliding into the abyss. The Bucharest-based Badea released his debut album Black Ecstasy on Error Broadcast at the end of 2013, a record that established his skill at threading skin-tingling melody through stark soundscapes. On new EP ANTI, he develops that theme, running the gamut from rugged, dubby techno ("Earn Cash Spend It All") to heartbreaking ambience ("Optimal Time"). As he hints at below, making ANTI had a somewhat therapeutic effect: the anger and frustration he felt before is a "ghost" now. Stream the EP in full below and scroll down to find out more about Badea and the Bucharest music scene.

How and where do you make music? I work at home in a three-room flat where I live with my family. It has a desktop computer, some software, a pair of headphones, a single M-audio BX5A speaker (the other one I smashed on the ground because of the poor sound), a soundcard and a midi controller. I also have a classic lightbulb lamp around for the night, when I need warm light.

What, outside of other artists, influences what you make? For the past couple of years, it's real life actually. The place where I live in. A bit of anger and frustration for this ANTI EP. It's all gone now; it's a ghost since it's finished so probably I'm gonna draw the juice from other things in the future.

There's a thrilling theatrical quality to your music. Where does that come from? It's a bit hard for me to answer this one. I don't find it that way and honestly I never think about this anymore. Whenever I tried to make something "theatrical" I kinda failed. I'm a bit of a dramaqueen myself, I find it a bit difficult for me and for other musicians that I know around to make music and be 100 percent in this while coping with a real full-time job and this place we live in. Really I have to worry about much more important things than this particularity of my output. I'm glad it seems thrilling and theatrical to you. It seems to me that I do a bit more than some tunes on the net.

What is the music scene like in Bucharest? Well, for this one I have two references. The first one is 148, it's this label that I also released on. It works on a newsletter system. You sign up for it and you get it on your mail when there's a new release. The other one is Maschine Das Clubnacht, which is actually a guy making events. He bought us all the good stuff up to present day and hopefully for the future. It's the only real deal we have for electronic music in the country...at least for me and I'm really grateful for that. Other than this, me and some fellow artists have decided to make our own label. We are working for our first compilation as I write this. This year it's gonna be on. It's called listen2me and it is going to incorporate more than music. Probably there's more to say about our scene but for me, even if we had really good gigs around it's still...anemic.

Listen to Romanian Producer C L N K’s Decaying Techno EP