Although Clams Casino's excellent Instrumental Mixtape first appeared in spring of this year as a free-to-circulate zip file, its swanky coloured vinyl reissue on Type screams out for more attention. Not that it was exactly lacking for love when it first emerged: sizeable proportions of the (admittedly pretty niche) music-loving internet were quick to heap praise on Clams' translucent hip-hop instrumentals, and subsequent online mixes and a 12' on Tri Angle have swiftly snared him a growing audience. But what's been interesting is how its release immediately made his instrumentals themselves the focal point of attention. Where beforehand they served largely as anonymous, wispy backing tracks for the likes of 'BasedGod' Lil B (including the stunning, not-included-here 'I'm God'), Main Attrakionz and Soulja Boy, outside of a vocal context they were revealed as intricate enough to stand alone in their own right.

1. Where Salem's attempts at dirty south hip-hop sounded forced and half-formed, even Clams Casino's baggiest tunes show an intrinsic understanding of their need for functionality as a backing track (even as, packed with detail, they transcend the need for an MC).
2. I started listening to hip-hop when I was about 12, and then I was only listening to hip-hop. From there, that was all I was into. Then I bought some hardware, some samplers, and just started messing around with that 'cause that’s really what I was into. Now tell us a bit about the hip-hop you were into back then.

While Nutley’s hip-hop scene has traditionally been just listeners, many have recently followed Volpe’s footsteps and placed their contribution to the hip-hop world. To any new rappers or producers, Clams advice is simple. “The best thing to do for you guys, is get all together, and get in a room, start working together.

So this physical release, under the clipped title Instrumentals, feels like an appropriate gesture. The sheer volume of music given away online ensures that people rarely listen to even half of the free material they download, simply because it's so easy to lose individual droplets in the deluge. So although only a fraction of listeners will end up actually buying it (not least thanks to the fact that its vinyl release is on quite a limited run), its very presence on Type - alongside the likes of Grouper, Peter Broderick and Richard Skelton - ought to ensure it gleans interest from an audience that might not usually pick up on an underground hip-hop record. Which, in the context of the music itself, is no bad thing; that a label whose tastes run right into post-classical modern composition have seen fit to put out Clams Casino speaks volumes about his potential for wider appeal.

Though having said all of that, there's something so delightfully internetty about Clams' music that to impose any degree of physical permanence upon it seems something of a contradiction. His closest contemporaries, both sonically and in terms of methodology, aren't fellow hip-hop producers - they're web-age bedroom producers like Laurel Halo, Dan Lopatin, Hype Williams and Maria Minerva, those constructing almost dizzyingly referential tracks out of complex meshes of samples and analogue and digital sound sources. Listening to a Clams Casino track is a similar experience to listening to a Hype Williams track, in that recognisable fragments of sampled vocal occasionally lurch to the surface of the mix for a second or two before vanishing - or remain half-cloaked in the background throughout, like the spectral presence of Photek's 'Kanei' lurking in Hype's recent 'Rise Up'. And like Hype's music, Clams' instrumentals sound ephemeral and peculiarly of this moment, phantom aggregations of mood and sound that coalesce for brief periods of time before potentially disengaging at some undisclosed point in the future. That analysis feels even more fitting given Clams himself, a bedroom producer who sends his tracks out via email to potential vocalists, then frequently loses track of where they've travelled until they emerge into the public eye complete with MC chatter. His connection with Lil B further fuels his status as a post-Web 2.0 producer; B has a reputation for remaining almost constantly online, interacting with the outside world via social networks and an ongoing stream of musical content.

Similarly to the likes of Halo and Lopatin, Clams' music is predominantly made up of synth: huge, rippling curtains of the stuff, with the contradictory property of sounding simultaneously impenetrably dense and almost totally weightless. Opener 'Motivation' explodes into action in peaking-in-the-red mode, its droning bursts of sub-bass distorting into a grainy haze as they hit full volume. Despite its colossal force, though, its physical impact is unexpectedly soothing, a balmy wash like standing waist-deep in tropical seawater. That's largely to do with the way that every available frequency is packed with something, even if only a growling undertow of white noise. The usual sources of abrasive, barbed sound - worming synth leads, snare hits, vocal samples - are cushioned and contained within a protective bubble of sonic interference. The overall effect is somewhat akin to listening through thick, viscous fluid. The previously unreleased, un-vocalled 'Numb' is a particularly good example, its androgynous voices, pitched in any number of different directions, arriving at the ear elongated into trailing siren songs.

Clams' sampling style is equally distinctive. While underneath the layers of superheated distortion his basic approach doesn't differ hugely from one common throughout hip-hop - taking short loops and extrapolating them to infinity - he uses almost entirely vocals, which he cut to pieces and allows to duck and dive in and out of audible range. On 'Illest Alive', a short snippet of Bjork's 'Bachelorette' looms to the surface and clips sharply, before reducing to wordless drift again. His treatment of distinctive voices - Bjork, Janelle Monáe on 'Cold War' - is reverent to the mood of the originals but unafraid to break them apart into constituent chunks to use as building blocks. However, while most tracks feature some human vocal presence, most of Clams' characters are anonymous, lonely and wordless, again in keeping with his tracks' webby, information overloaded feel.

This approach to track construction and sampling bears dwelling upon - though last year's short lived burst of interest in what was foolishly labeled 'witch house' (the gothic connection in most of it was tenuous to say the least, and it had fuck all to do with house) aimed to work within similar sonic boundaries, what's striking about Clams' music is how much more proficient it sounds. In fact, the thoughtful approach, attentiveness and depth of Instrumentals shows up many of that non-genre's key proponents as only shallowly engaging with their source material. Where Salem's attempts at dirty south hip-hop sounded forced and half-formed, even Clams Casino's baggiest tunes show an intrinsic understanding of their need for functionality as a backing track (even as, packed with detail, they transcend the need for an MC).

That said, unlike his more recent Rainforest EP on Tri Angle, which showcased some of his less tightly structured productions, the tracks on Instrumentals are far more closely linked to their original purpose as tools for MCs. Its final two tracks are its sparsest and most rhythmically immediate - the low slung beat and bass bulbs of 'She's Hot'; 'Cold War', where a stanza from Monae is left to run for a full three minutes, only occasionally tampered with. While quite some distance from the heaving columns of sound that make up the majority of the record, both are strong reminders that, despite their ghostly aura and presence on Type, these tracks remain intrinsically linked to the MCs that originally vocalled them. Listening to the instrumental and vocal takes back to back, the fact they work equally well in either role is testament to the versatility and subtlety of their construction.

At times, it seems like hip-hop — including its listeners and its artists — has the attention span of a golden retriever puppy. It's happened a million times: A producer will come up with a hot sound. Ears perk up across the genre and artists rush toward it en masse, biting that style over and over again until the life in it is gone.

It happened to the DJ Mustard. It happened to the RZA. And it nearly happened to Clams Casino.

The 29-year-old beatsmith Clams Casino, aka Michael Volpe, enjoyed a monumental breakout back in 2011 when he pioneered a subgenre that came to be known as 'cloud rap.' Characterized by its heady, atmospheric soundscapes, drawn-out choral samples and penetrating drums, his beats were everywhere, providing a foundation for rappers like A$AP Rocky, Lil B, The Weeknd and Mac Miller to start building their careers. Biters flocked. A thousand airy raps later, its tracks started to feel like ponderous shells of what they once were and rappers began to move on.

However, Clams Casino proper debut full-length, 32 Levels, out Friday, has proved the subgenre still has a pulse. It's still very much alive and ultimately far more resilient than anyone likely imagined in the last days of the '10s.

32 Levels gathers together many of the rap luminaries whose careers Clams helped launch — Lil B, A$AP Rocky, Vince Staples — alongside a host of artists whose music has had parallel trajectory to the cloud rap phenomenon. R&B outsider Kelela and Sam Herring of Future Islands, for example, appear on two of the more surprising breakout tracks on the album.

Clams' dense, plaintive harmonies and scattered mechanical percussion send Kelela's vocal lifts even higher on 'A Breath Away,' and make Herring sound like a promethazine-addled Johnny Cash. They're expertly balanced, and they're proof that the producer knows his sound inside and out.

'When people try to copy, I've learned not to run away from that and say I don't want to do that anymore, or I'm not gonna do my own thing that I started because other people are doing it,' Clams Casino said in a phone interview. 'When you run away like that, you give it up to them. So I've made sure not to do that. I progress my own ways, just naturally, and evolve in the right way.'

Clams describes himself as somewhat of a recluse, a backpack beat-maker, who was pioneering digital collaboration back in the era of MySpace. In conversation with Mic, he discusses the role of the producer, the mechanics of the industry and his relationship with the most Based political pundit CNN has ever lent a microphone to, Lil B.

[The interview below has been edited and condensed for clarity]

Mic: Tell us what led to the making of this album. Why break from your past mixtape cycle?

Clams Casino: Well, after putting out those three mixtapes, I got bored of that. I wasn't sure what I was gonna do next. But after the third one, I knew it would be the last.

The idea for this album started from working on a lot of other people's projects, producing behind the scenes and having a lot of things leftover that never ended up anywhere. It was really good stuff that I loved and the artist loved, but it didn't have a home. It would stick out too much, or whatever. It felt such a shame for it all to be wasted. So I figured I would just do my own thing and string them all together, connect all of them and put them out, so that's where the idea started.

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How does the title fit into that? I know it's from a Lil B song from back in the day. What does the title '32 Levels' mean to you?

CC: There's so many different types of feelings and moods throughout the album. There are so many layers, they're all very detailed compositions. There's two whole versions of the album — one instrumental and one with the artist contributions. So it's got layers for the audience to explore.

To me, though, it has a more personal meaning. It's taken from a Lil B song that I'd done in 2009, and that was called 'I'm God.' That was a major turning point for me for realizing where I fit in musically. That song was a very important turning point as far as discovering my identity and sound. I skimmed through and first got a glimpse I would make it to this point. It's where I found the spot where I fit in musically — which is nowhere really. I feel like I've always been on my own, and I've realized I don't really fit in anywhere.

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Tell me about meeting Lil B. It seems he's been integral part of your rise as an artist. How did you all link up? What's your relationship like?

CC: It was really just through MySpace, which was the first platform I was using to get my music out when I started taking it seriously, maybe fall 2007 or so. I was just a big fan of him and his group, The Pack. He was running his own page and, once I tracked down his email, I sent him a bunch of beats. We didn't actually meet properly until much later.

We probably met and hung out for the first time in the process of creating [32 Levels], working in the studio. We'd done a few shows together and whatnot, but we hardly spoke during those. I'd just see him real fast, say what's up and we didn't really have the time. It was so weird to finally meet up after working together for like 10 years online. But it was really natural. We just picked up where we left off.

I'm curious about that larger-than-life, perfectly meme-able persona. Is he really like that in private?

CC: [laughs] Yeah, I mean, he's a pretty honest guy. That's just him.

I heard you've started recording some of your own instrumentals and sampling them for this album. What do you think about the whole debate regarding sampling? I know it's kept artists like De La Soul from putting any of their music on streaming platforms. How is the genre changing under all the new scrutiny surrounding sampling?

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CC: It seems like it's pretty bad nowadays. Every album that comes out seems to have one song held, or more. It's gonna force a new way, whatever it is. If that new way means people are going to use the same sounds, but just have to flip them in ways that are unrecognizable so you can get 'em cleared, then you'll have to get more creative. Or if it's recording their own stuff. It should be interesting to see the ways people start doing that. I found a way that works for me. It took a few years. I have like a couple years full of really bad beats. It was a long process of trial and error.

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In prepping for this interview, I saw this tweet from Kaytranada, another producer whose recently been dipping into the pop world, who's sad so many of these recent EDM and pop collaborations sound like 'boiled chicken with no seasoning.' What are you're thoughts on that?

CC: [laughs] That's funny. I mean, yeah, a lot of that stuff when it gets on a big, pop level, it can turn into a factory, just putting things out for the wrong reasons. I mean, that's the music business. That shouldn't be a surprise for anyone. Once something works one time, the music business is just going to try to recreate that as many times as they can until it doesn't. The style of music is going to change, come in and out, but the industry is gonna hold onto it until it dies. I try not to get caught up in things like that.

Clams Casino's 32 Levels drops Friday, July 15, in two versions — one with artist contributions, and one comprised solely Clams' intricate instrumentals.

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