Soul Clap

2001-07: Founding

The band Soul Clap was founded in Boston by Eli "Elyte" Goldstein and Charles "Cynce" Levine in 2001, who met in high school. Record store owner and house DJ Caril Mitro was a mentor and influence on their early genre-mixing sound. They began throwing their own parties in Boston around 2001, before starting to tour around 2007, deejaying on the underground club circuit, where the BBC wrote they began "steadily gathering acclaim for their bootlegs of RnB classics and house remixes." Wrote ResidentAdvisor.net, "their productions established a trademark sound that was as inspired by pop, soul and R&B as it was by house music." In Boston the group began hosting a number of dance parties including Midweek Techno, billed as "the area's longest running techno night" which "hosted dozens of DJs from around the world at an Irish pub in Cambridge."

2008-12: First releases

Starting in 2008 the group released a number of singles and EPs on Airdrop Music, first with The Giraffe Remixes, which was followed in 2009 by Instafix EP. In 2009 Airdrop also released their album The Definition. While Airdrop Records released the group's first 12" vinyl records, Soul Clap has also released music on Crosstown Rebels, Culprit Records, and Mizrahi's Double Standard Records.

Soul Clap met the DJ duo Wolf + Lamb (Gadi Mizrahi and Zev Eisenberg) in September 2008, when they performed at the Marcy Hotel in Brooklyn, a club owned by Wolf + Lamb. They soon began collaborating and releasing music on the Wolf + Lamb record label. In 2010 Soul Clap released the collaboration Joint Custody - EP, created with Gadi Mizrahi of Wolf + Lamb. Soon the label !K7 approached all four DJs about doing a mix for their series titled DJ Kicks. About their 2011 DJ Kicks mix, Eli Goldstein described it as “gentle and deep”. After the DJ Kicks series, Soul Clap and Wolf + Lamb went on a two month world tour together, playing regular six-hour DJ sets. Soul Clap have performed in the US, Europe, and Japan, including the Bloc Festival in 2011.

Their album Social Experiment 002, released in 2011 on Art Department's Jonny White's No. 19 Music record label, was their first commercially available mix. Stated Pitchfork in a positive review, "Social Experiment is a mix without an obvious agenda. It sounds like it wants to make me dance, but it's not pushy. It's not a label showcase or a genre exercise; the only two summary descriptions I can really pin on it are "fresh" (most artists here are relatively new to the scene) and "North American" (for its creators and their choices: Art Department, Benoit & Sergio, Jimmy Edgar, Lee Foss, Seth Troxler, and Nightplane, among others, hail from this side of the Atlantic)."

They contributed to Ben Westbeech's album There's More To Life Than This in 2011. In 2012 Soul Clap released E-FUNK: The Mixtape. Soul Clap have done official remixes for groups such as Laid Back, Metronomy, Little Dragon, Robert Owens, and DJ Harvey.

2012: EFUNK: The Album

In late 2011 the duo began recording their first full-length album, producing the tracks in Miami at The Stillwater Social Club. Excluding several songs on split EPs, the album included their first original and unreleased material in close to two years. Among other tracks the album includes a cover version of Egyptian Lover’s song "Alezby Inn." Guest appearances included Baby Prince (Gadi Mizrahi of Wolf + Lamb) and Mel Blatt. In 2012 they released EFUNK: The Album, with the title EFUNK short for "Everybody's Freaky Under Nature's Kingdom." The duo wrote that "The album is a culmination of our entire lives with music. This music is totally different than what we would put on an EP. It's not designed for DJs or dancefloors, but we wanted it to be something we would have put on in high school while we were chilling with homies, cutting class or trying to kick it to a chick."

The BBC positively compared the album to work by Chromeo, arguing "They share the same penchant for electro-funk, but Soul Clap sling classic 90s RnB, house, disco and New Jack Swing into the frat party punch." According to a mixed review in XLR8R, "Where past releases found Soul Clap opening up its bizarre production with slow builds and vast pockets of space, the flow here seems rushed." The review praised the band overall but criticized the radio-friendly size and formula of the songs, stating "the vocals employed often obtrusively dominate the mix while Soul Clap's expert production unfortunately takes the sideline."

2013-15: Recent projects

By 2013 the group was collaborating with Parliament-Funkadelic's George Clinton and his label C Kunspyruhzy. Soul Clap's collaborative album Wolf + Lamb vs Soul Clap was released in CD form and digitally in September 2013, and that year they performed at the Detroit Electronic Music Festival, Osheaga Festival, 35 Denton, Snowball music festival, and the Decibel Festival. The continued touring into 2014 as well, appearing at Electric Forest Festival, Rhythm & Vines, BUKU Music + Art Project and at Wonderfruit in Thailand. The group taught a university course on dance music at Tufts University. In 2015 Soul Clap released an EP 'In Da kar' collaborating once again with the legendary Parliament-Funkadelic's George Clinton & Sly Stone on the keys.

2016: "Soul Clap"

In October 2016, Soul Clap released their self titled second album, Soul Clap.

Soul Clap Records

Soul Clap operates Soul Clap Records in Boston. The label releases music both digitally and on vinyl, and is also a part of Crew Love, a publishing and touring group formed with Wolf + Lamb and Double Standard Records. The label releases the Dancing on the Charles series of albums, the first of which came out as SCRCD01 in May 2013. The albums compile a number of different Boston artists.

Style

According to XLR8R, Soul Clap "made its name by effortlessly tempting the listener into the darker, more abstract corners of house (and its relative offshoots) by dressing them up with smooth, jazzy trimmings." Pitchfork Media has stated that "While Soul Clap are arguably the most visible electronic artists from Boston in some time, one thing they are not is a harbinger of a new or exciting style or scene; their success as DJs (and producers/remixers) is predicated on an elegant, elastic mix of house and techno."

Members

Remixes