Contemporary Soundtracks To Our Ancient Past

World Music & Elemental Soundscapes for Dance & Relaxation

David Antony Clark is a new kind of explorer, his spirit of adventure guided not by sextant and compass, but by the instruments and charts of the composer and the faint footprints of his forebears. In his quest to map the soundscape of our human journey, he traverses continents, listening for echoes of ancient rhythms. He then pours these primaural relics into his musical melting pot and gently stirs our souls.

Discography

World
An intriguing collection of world music tracks featuring a variety of languages, modern rhythms and inventive sounds.

World features 10 of David's most popular World Music favourites: remixed and re-mastered. This collection melds a variety if ethnic instruments and languages, unique invented sounds, and modern rhythms to produce powerfully evocative sonic soundscapes.

David's abiding passions are music, travel, and the natural world and World can, in many ways, be considered an autobiography.
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Tribal Blood
New Zealand Māori voices and traditional instruments blended with contemporary dance rhythms.

Featuring Rawiri Toia
Around one thousand years ago, voyaging Polynesian canoes discovered a remote, uninhabited wilderness in the southern Pacific Ocean: a land with a flora and fauna unlike any on Earth. Tribal Blood - Manawataki Maori explores the feelings of wonder and separation of the first people to settle these extraordinary islands of Aotearoa/New Zealand, a people who now call themselves Maori.
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Birdsong Café
The relaxing, ambient sounds of the New Zealand rainforest. Ideal for home, office or café. No music to distract.

Natural and exquisitely crafted sounds create this unique and beautiful landscape. Birds and creatures native to New Zealand are heard in their natural wilderness without the intrusion of music.

Birds long extinct have been brought back to life thanks to the skilfull use of modern audio technology. The mysterious voices of these ancient creatures enhance this magical landscape where refreshment is yours at Birdsong Café.
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Rock Art
A collection of neo-primal favorites. Percussive beats and unhurried arrangements for interpretive dance.

Rock Art features remixes and re-masterings of David's most successful neo-primal classics. A strongly evocative sense of place and mood pervades this album. The primitive rhythms of our early ancestors are captured in evocative and melodic soundscapes.

A dazzling variety of sounds are banged or shaken out of many organic materials then digitally sampled to develop the basis for David's infectious rhythms.

With loping percussion beats and unhurried arrangements, it recalls life when time was marked by the sun and stars and modern technology was a hand axe. Rock Art speaks to the primal being within us all.
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Shaman Dancing
The evocative beat of the shaman's drum underpins our human journey through countless millennia.

From the most ancient of times the shaman has played a fundamental role in hunting societies around the world. Through the shaman's intervention, the harmonious balance between the spirit and natural worlds is maintained: crops are harvested, hunts are successfully completed, and illness is cured or prevented.

This album is dedicated to the spirits those men and women who have sacrificed so much for humanity and aided in our survival and well-being throughout countless millennia.
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Before Africa
Stone age rhythms and neo primal soundscapes call us back to our human origins in ancient Africa.

Review by Bill Binkelman, Wind & Wire
"David Antony Clark's Before Africa is easily one of the best releases on the stellar White Cloud label, and that's really saying something. This is an outstanding 'driving' recording, so if you don't have a car CD player, record this album and set out for your favorite winding country road. You will not be disappointed.

The album opener, 'A Land Before Eden', starts the release off on a high note with its gentle but playful loping rhythm, its floating background synths, its flute melody line and it's cheerful yet worldly sense of optimism. This song is simply one of the best pieces of music I've heard in the past year. I never want to stop playing it. But, when I did, I found the 'Stone Children with it's kalimba-like melody over some background vocal samplings. The kalimba is a wonderful instrumental sound and I flat out fell in love with it. The rhythm on this song is mid-tempo, again in a sort of loping beat, and that's the key to this album's success as driving music.

Scattered throughout the CD are ambient sound recordings of life in Africa, some wildlife, some nature and they are well-done (listen to the sounds of animals at a watering hole at the beginning of 'The Gathering Place'. It adds to the feel of the CD as it helps to transport you into the otherworld that exists on only the very best recordings.

By turns haunting (Flamingo Lake), gently rhythmic (The Gathering Place), mysterious (Ancestral Voices), and quasi-tribal/primal (The Inner Hunt), all of the music on Before Africa is a joy to hear. As a reviewer and someone who gets lots of music to listen to, when something makes it into my 'keep playing it way past the review' group, it's a very special recording. David Antony Clark's latest is definitely one of those."
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Sacred Sites
A deeply reflective album inspired by some of the world's most revered sites of spiritual significance.

Combining environmental soundscapes and contemporary rhythm, David mixes ethnic voices and instrumentation summoning powerfully evocative images to capture the spiritual essence of some of the world's most revered sacred sites.

With this album David uses a variety of ethnic languages and instruments melding them with unique invented sounds. He ranges widely - from New Zealand to Nepal, Syria to Peru and is joined by musicians and vocalists from many world traditions.
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Songs of Magic, Sex & War
Deeply personal and provocotive, contemporary issues reflected in an alternative musical style.

Best known for his neo-primal instrumental music, David presents an intriguing four-track EP of lyric-based songs. These range from the ironic to the autobiographical to the deeply personal. Take a stroll through the psyche of David Antony Clark.
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The Man who Painted Caves
Tracing the primaural footsteps of our forefathers back to the simpler world of the hunter-gatherer.

Using ancient instruments, birdcalls and environmental ambiance, David approaches his music like a painter of caves, revisiting a time when our ancestors engaged in exactly that. Intriguing organic sounds are used in a vibrant impressionistic mold, finding and exploring several musical canvasses through tribal rhythms, ritualistic gatherings, trance-like visions and prayers to invoke the return of the light.

The music is very evocative, gentle, and with a depth of beauty that really penetrates the listening space. Clark employs lyrical melodies and intriguing ambient sounds in the building of his beguiling mosaics of sound artistry, and his music will appeal to fans of Richard Burmer, David Arkenstone and others of a visionary nature.
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The Leaving of Ireland
A haunting tribute to the spirit of that indomitable Irish diaspora who settled North America.

With Jon Mark
For hundreds of years the dream that became America was a dream that belonged to the people of Ireland.

The Leaving Of Ireland is a haunting tribute to the indomitable spirit of the Irish and a unique musical travelogue of the great Irish migration to North America in the mid-eighteenth century. This beautiful work features the sublime voice of Deidre Starr, the plaintive voices of pipes and whistles, with subtle evocative musicscapes and emotional narratives.
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Spirit Dance
A collection of expressive, interpretive dance tracks. Explore the depth of your inner being.

Spirit Dance features ten of David's most popular rhythmic compositions, remixed and remastered for interpretive dance. All tracks have a distinctly primal or tribal feel to help you reveal your inner hunter-gatherer. Features such favourites as Frog Dancing and Spirit Stalking.
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Australia Beyond the Dreamtime
Subtle chants, didgeridoo, and dramatic field recordings invoke the atmosphere of Australia's ancient past.

The natural wonders and Aboriginal legends of Northern Australia are the inspiration behind this mystical album by New Zealand composer David Antony Clark.

Chants, nature sounds, and the ever-popular didgeridoo are woven through melodic themes and rhythms that capture the cadence of a walkabout. One cut that made me smile was 'Frog Dancing', with its cell-vibrating, three-dimensional croaks. Crocs and dingoes, brush fires and morning rains create wilderness environments amidst catchy light-ambient rhythms; rather like Deep Forest, outback. Just beyond the obvious, the ancestors beckon with echoing whistles and chants.
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Terra Inhabitata.
The mystical beauty of ancient New Zealand and its wildlife before the arrival of human habitation.

Review
"The definitive New Zealand sound. Here David has merged his fascination with ancient Maori instruments and keyboards to explore this country's distant past.

Within the opening few seconds of the album, the cry of the Morepork rises above the drifting keyboard notes of David Antony Clark's 'Gondwana's Ark', the first piece of his album, Terra Inhabitata. The koauau, a small Maori flute, adds to the ambiance of the natural setting.

The environment plays a large part in these interpretations. From a 'Moa Swamp' to an 'Avalanche of Snow', we are transported from concrete and glass to punga and mist. With a myriad of native birdcalls singing in the background: hear the call of the Moa as it tramps the dampened verdant landscapes of old."
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Birdsong Paradise
An hour-long panorama crafted from the beautiful bird calls and nature sounds of Aotearoa/New Zealand.

"Wilderness at the dawn of time. A primordial paradise exquisitely crafted from the pure sounds of nature"

This beautiful CD will take you on a journey into nature you will never forget. In this stunning, hour-long panorama-in-sound of New Zealand's natural world, you will visit primordial rain forests, remote mountain peaks, placid lakes, and ocean depths. You will hear the voices of more than 70 of the fascinating and unique creatures that make these beautiful Pacific islands their home. Welcome to their private world where they will capture your imagination and heart.
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About David

Born in New Zealand's southern city of Dunedin, David spent most of his early years on a musical diet of British folk and rock. From the age of 15 David played regularly in bands as acoustic and bass guitarist, touring many of the remotest parts of the country. Most of David’s third decade was spent in Europe, notably in Ireland, France, Germany, and Austria where he taught English and music.

A lengthy period of traveling the hippy highway brought him into contact with the many cultures of the Middle East, Indian subcontinent, Nepal, and South and Central America, to which he returns regularly.

His love of music, travel and technology combined when he encountered Jon Mark, formerly of the Mark-Almond band, and his partner Thelma Burchell and was invited to join their Naxos/White Cloud label. David's involvement with White Cloud introduced him to fellow New Zealand artists Philip Riley and Peter Pritchard: an association that continues and develops.

David continues to travel the world in his quest for musical and cultural experience and to record the sounds of environments and cultures for future generations. He has explored the Pacific, the Far East and American continent and still his greatest inspiration continues to be drawn from the natural beauty of New Zealand's extraordinary landscape.