Claus, Michael

Claus, Michael

Lavender Palace

100% Silk

Lavender Palace is a portrait of a process more than a place – the result of a creative headspace San Francisco producer (and Silva Electronics boss) Michael Claus describes as “dropping out of the world and entering a flow state.” That heightened sense of spatial focus, dilated and dialed in, colors the collection in subtle shades of dream house, dub techno, and liquid downtempo. Recorded before and during the strangest days of peak lockdown, Claus found himself drawn to sci-fi notions of fantastical cities and mythic landscapes, hazy realms in the horizon of the mind’s eye. Further inspired by a new and improved studio arrangement in the city, the sessions unspooled in long, low-slung voyages of texture and pulse, restlessness and reverie, “yearning for a better tomorrow.” It’s music of empty streets and guarded hope, percolating at the precipice of futures too real to recognize.

Claus, Michael

Memory Protect

100% Silk

Bay Area beacon Michael Claus operates from an overtly Pacific perspective in his house and techno constructs, shaping fog and bass along shorelines of elusive rhythm. Though active since 2004 he’s only in the past few years begun issuing tracks under his own name to the public domain, the latest collection of which goes furthest in embedding amorphous acid and cloud-soft synths into introspective coastal jack. Memory Protect maps eight hazed designs sourced from three years of work, misting the difference between movement and meditation, atmosphere and anticipation. Past collabs with Nackt hinted at a subtle touch for hypnosis and heightened sensory environment but here Claus captures his essence in its freest, most fluid state. Bodies of water, oceans of memory – what collects, continues. Recorded in San Francisco, 2014-2017. Mastered by Matt Tammariello.