Impossible and arcane: a strange new four-part a capella work from Bristol-based sound artist Yas Clarke.
A striking new a capella work from Bristol-based sound artist Yas Clarke, The Thicket is an intricate, rhythmic and melodic text score, composed for four voices. In the context of climate change, the composition probes the limits of human capacities for understanding our position in the natural world: the feedback loops of consciousness, the construction of myth, the processes of categorisation and delineation, the creation of self as a discontinuity in nature.
Written in arcane vernacular, The Thicket narrates an ambiguous pilgrimage into the wilderness; at times resembling orphaned passages of William Morris’ proto-fantasy novels or a Doris Lessing sci-fi, at others becoming abstract and non-verbal, like syllabic tabla score or the alien opera of The Fifth Element. As it progresses the text becomes increasingly abstract, describing the dissolving of the human identity: words break down into syllables, textures and tones and become musical in their presentation. What emerges is a unique a cappella work that opens a speculative channel between Chaucer and Bob Cobbing.
Stretching language from a fragmented linear narrative to churning minimalist cascades, Clarke’s text is delivered such that each performer takes one word each, cycling the whole text between them in a strict order and rhythm. Each singer is conducted by a distinct in-ear audio click track, a process which allows for an detailed structuring of the four-part score; phrases, words and syllables layered into elaborate rhythms and harmonies that would otherwise be impossible to perform; unmanipulated voices generating phasing patterns and repetitions, reminiscent of early Steve Reich tape works.
First performed in the woods at Supernormal Festival to a rapturous reception, and subsequently released on TBC Editions in 2023, The Thicket will be touring across 2025-26.
“It’s not like much else I’ve heard… it’s really knocked me sideways, in a good way.” Jen Allen, BBC Radio 3, Late Junction.
“A meditation on humans & our place on Earth, conjuring both a sense of home & another world… Clarke reminds us that the barriers between real & imagined, natural & inorganic, aren’t so strict.” Vanessa Ague, The Quietus.
Yas Clarke is a sound artist and composer experimenting with form and process within live and recorded sound. His work explores the human relationship to its environment, probing the boundaries between organic and synthetic; human and natural; continuous and discrete. He is best known for his work in live-art and experimental theatre, working with artists such as Nic Green, Cade and MacAskill, Action Hero and Simone Kenyon.