Perhaps better known as Claude VonStroke, Barclay Crenshaw drops a new album with a new sound loosely influenced by the aliens of his childhood.
When Barclay Crenshaw announced that he was taking a break from the Claude VonStroke alias and focusing on his birth name and a new sound, fans were curious. Some were excited, some were apprehensive, but they all wanted to know more.
We sat down with Crenshaw at one of his last live shows as Claude VonStroke for the foreseeable future, and he was clear that he’s not retiring the alias, just taking a break. We’ve been following his 80-Day Challenge and listening to all the teasers leading up to the album, and we can say that there are some great things coming from Barclay Crenshaw. Different, for sure, but great!
During that interview, Crenshaw talked about how he chose the name Open Channel for the album. As a child, he’d use the open channels on his dad’s CB radio to try talk with aliens. When pressed if he ever reached them, Crenshaw only answered, “Oh, yeah! But I can’t share what they told me. I need to keep that a secret!” before a bellow of evil laughter. Regardless, the Open Channel LP finds Crenshaw leaning into his own musical desires and not thinking hard about commercial trends.
This is my passion, hopefully you can hear it in the music. I really wanted to start fresh with all the influences I grew up with, from James Brown to DJ Krust.
Barclay Crenshaw
Open Channel clocks in at ten tracks, and on a recent album listening party, Crenshaw was clear that this relatively small number was an intentional choice. He finds that albums released currently with too many tracks can be cumbersome and feel like a burden to listen through.
For better or worse, there’s no doubt that our attention spans are more limited these days, so this seems to be a wise choice. And while Open Channel may have a theme, one of our favorite things about it is how the tracks each stand out and have such different sounds on their own.
Open Channel from Barclay Crenshaw is available now from your platform of choice! Read on below for the full album review.
Stream Barclay Crenshaw – Open Channel on Spotify:
Thematically, Crenshaw notes that Open Channel is based on UK hard bass with more melodies and vocals.
For those unaware, this is not the first Barclay Crenshaw album. The first was a 2017 release called Revisited and its theme was “dusty ’90s hip-hop, but with future production.” Both Revisited and Open Channel are very clearly not Claude VonStroke, and that’s the beauty of working under different aliases.
The opening track of the new album, “Do My Ting” featuring Flowdan and Stush, starts hard and sets the stage for the dichotomy of his aliases. If you enjoy this track, be sure to check out Crenshaw at Sol Fest in May where he’ll perform with Flowdan and Stush.
The story around the track “Stay Together” featuring TeeZandos echoes the theme of how Crenshaw approached this album. He secured studio time in the UK without much of a plan, and he camped out there for several days simply messaging grime MCs to come work with him.
He got TeeZandos to drop in and played all his hard grime beats for her. She wasn’t really impressed. Somewhat prepared for this, Crenshaw turned over his library of other beats and told her to pick something out. She found a beat, wrote the lyrics, and recorded the vocals in under two hours. How’s that for a track creation? Turns out it’s super catchy, too!
Sometimes family can be both your best and worst critic.
When making “King of Monsters,” Crenshaw’s wife said it was the worst track she ever heard, and his son said it was the best. As any married man would do, he listened to his son and also got his daughter to help write the opening riffs.
And the screams in the track? Crenshaw recorded Cedar Point roller coaster riders on his iPhone during a family trip. This track is a slow burner with a terrific payoff, challenging Crenshaw to see how patiently he could write. It also includes a production plugin coded by his team called The Nasty Channel.
Continuing with the experimental angle of this entire album, “The Quiet Storm” sees Crenshaw playing with dubstep plugins on what could otherwise be called a deep house track. The closing vocal sample says it all: “Oh, that does sound good!” And this leads into the super funky “The Juice is Good,” which helps support the case for testing the limits and experimenting whenever possible.
If fact, this album is really a family affair, with many of Crenshaw’s family members included in various places of the final tracks.
Barclay Crenshaw is definitely not a household name as a vocalist, yet he sings and samples himself numerous times. His son and daughter both have notable moments on some tracks, as does his brother.
It’s pretty cool that he considers his family to be “Big in the Game,” which is also the name of the next track. It’s dirty in the best possible way. Then, “Dub Life” finds Crenshaw singing again, bringing in more funk and a little reggae, too. “Shyboy” opens with a recording of his son when he was five and having an existential meltdown. That’s really funny, and the track is terrific!
“The Rebel” featuring Snowy was originally supposed to have a cleaner set of vocals, but the bass took up so much space that Crenshaw decided to make the vocals into a chop. And we close out the album with “Biz Markie” to honor the legendary rapper and singer. Nothing seems more fitting than to memorialize someone like “The Biz” as the cherry on top of this album.
At the end of the album listening party, Crenshaw said, “Believe it or not, I am going to play all of these songs out on the road somehow.” It seems like he’s acknowledging that to be a challenge. We’re glad it’s a challenge accepted and can’t wait to hear these all live!
Barclay Crenshaw – Open Channel – Tracklist:
- Do My Ting (ft. Flowdan and Stush)
- Stay Together (ft. TeeZandos)
- King of Monsters
- The Quiet Storm
- The Juice is Good
- Big in the Game
- Dub Life
- Shyboy
- The Rebel (ft. Snowy)
- Biz Markie
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