Summary: Based in Texas, Craig Clouse makes a lot of music, and he has fun doing it. How else do you explain record titles like Cunts with Roses, Toilet Door Tits, You’re Lucky to Have Friends Like Us and, perhaps best of all, Find Out What Happens When People Start Being Polite For A Fucking Change? For over 10 years, Clouse and the various other musicians who’ve been in and out of Shine and Shine – the group’s press material regularly refers to performing live with 10 drummers at a time – have been gutting post-punk, krautrock, electro and more for parts, combining the grubbiest aspects of all those sounds into something that’s somewhere between Big Black and Big Beat. It’s no surprise that Powell and Jaime Williams’ Diagonal label has taken a particular – ahem – shine to Clouse in recent years: there’s clear parallels between Powell’s music and Clouse’s, and when Powell takes about finding “getting [a track’s] idea down” boring (“it’s when you get into the detail that the track turns from ‘it could be anyone’ to sounding like me”, he told Resident Advisor), it’s hard not to imagine Clouse sharing that approach. Even on this mix, which only features one Shit and Shine track, everything feels like it could be by Clouse. Shit and Shine’s most recent album, 54-Synth-Brass 38 Metal Guitar 65 Cathedral, is out now on Rocket Recordings.
