Forest Clay's Vernal Pools

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Forest Clay music project from Pembroke Pines

Recommended if you like dance music, but not always dancing.

Forest Clay is a dude from Pembroke Pines. That's near Miami.

Don't let the sing-rapping in the first moments of opening track “The Plains” throw you. It's not really white boy rap when the instrumental signifiers of hip hop have been yoinked like a carpet from the music's feet and replaced with cheery Panda Bear melodies and synthetic calypso instrumentation.

The album, Vernal Pools is available for download here.

It drifts into dreamy soundtrack ambience and silky arpeggios, sometimes abutted by dissonant vocal melodies (“Breathing Ground”), but it's perhaps at its best when its vaguely tropical wood block melodies couple with ambient drones to recall a less frenetic High Places, accompanied by gruff, muffled baritone grumbling until it's all buried in clean washes of synth as syrupy thick as molasses.

Forest Clay, “Shnukums Bathing”