Stuck in the 9-5 grind, stifled by the impersonality of constant social
media and mobile interaction, contemporary urban life can be
suffocating. For a certain breed, release cannot be found in the
vast, unpopulated great outdoors. Urban Animals congregate in
heaving warehouses, seeking solace in the liberating beats of the
kick drum. They are bound not by association, but through a shared
experience of primal relief felt in those shadowy, dance floor
corners swelling with the sounds of low end frequencies and
brazenly sculpted grooves. This is the Urban Animal’s jungle.
Claude VonStroke’s third original album and the 100th release for
dirtybird is indebted to this bold and bestial inner-city lifestyle, but
it’s also a product of its creator; a unique subspecies steeped in
that San Franciscan sound, intersecting unknown terrain on
instruction of the inimitable dirtybird label boss.
Just as Urban
Animal’s artwork reconstructs photography of derelict city
architecture from Detroit and the Midwest into three compelling
animal portraits, so too has Claude VonStroke sampled unexpected
sounds from his chaotic working environment to create the nine
intriguing tracks that make up his full length composition. Think of
VonStroke as a modern day, West Coast Frankenstein, his creature a
rugged arrangement of the most discordant, unlikely parts whilst
somehow brimming with beauty and human appeal.
Spanning genre, space and mood, Claude VonStroke’s Urban Animal
is as unpredictable and bewildering as any living entity.