Warm Visions

Well, here we are. After a decade of floating around illicitly, Clams Casino’s groundbreaking “I’m God” instrumental has finally been cleared with Imogen Heap’s blessing. Now credited as Clams Casino & Imogen Heap (which is an absolute banger combination now that I look at it spelled out in front of me like that), the sample-heavy tune has moved to streaming services for the first time and will hopefully make the two musicians a hefty chunk of change after rotating on various chill playlists.

The beat was made for Lil B’s song (obviously of the same name) off of 2009’s 6 Kiss, but on its own, the instrumental later ballooned into a cloud rap landmark, serving as the inspiration to SO many beatmakers down the road. Countless amounts of streaming platform fodder, Soundcloud mixes, YoutTube playlists and blog posts just like this were borne of this song. Even listening to it now after hundreds of spins puts me into a groove. It clearly has some sort of magic touch, from the disembodied waves of vocals (thanks Imogen!) to the booming bass, this song still sounds fresh today and carries that air of nostalgia to a time when all this was so exciting and new. This was something to get excited about back then, and it still is now.

Next up is a personal anecdote, so go hop to the streaming sites if you wanna, or go buy some Imogen Heap + Clams Casino music. I remember the first time I heard this song was the summer before college. This was a very important period of time for me, and I seem to recall every detail of these months quite vividly. My family planned on moving to Connecticut in August of 2011 – it had been in the cards since 2009. In June, our house was sold and we moved into an extended stay hotel, which is where we’d be for two months, thanks to my ever-gracious parents letting my sister and I live out a little bit more of our summer in Michigan. The problems though were that my music library was stored on our home computer (which along with my CD collection was on the east coast) and I had foolishly “restored” my iPod because I didn’t know what I was doing. In short, no music. However, I had just received a laptop as a graduation present, along with a basic smart phone – my tickets to rebuilding my library.

For almost a month, I only listened to free mp3s blogs hosted on their sites (remember those?) and CDs my friends would let me rip onto my computer. If you look at my iTunes library history, the first additions were this song, Grimes’ “Vanessa”, Peaking Lights “Laid Back (Tiger Eyes)”, Ty Segall’s “You Make The Sun Fry”, Ford & Lopatin’s “Emergency Room”, UMO’s “How Can U Luv Me” and Washed Out’s “Amor Fati”. Clearly I was pulling from GvsB. Likewise, I had also just found the miracle of “3G” and would stream hosted songs like “I’m God” whenever I could from my phone. Spending hot summer days counting down the moments before I was uprooted accompanied by these tunes was pretty nice, and I will always hold an extra fondness for Clams Casino and all the other musicians that released music around that time, along with all the blogs that hosted mp3s for me to download. In short, this song was there for me when I needed it. Hot summer days feeling alone and limited. It still connects to this day and that’s pretty incredible.