Claude VonStroke’s hiatus is Barclay Crenshaw’s gain on a single that formalizes a new age of Crenshaw’s enigmatic sound.
After a storied, 18-year campaign under the Claude VonStroke moniker, Barclay Crenshaw is putting his house alter-ego on an indefinite pause to go back to his birth-name project.
VonStroke’s hiatus heralds what he calls “a new bass era” for Crenshaw that begins with an intrepid curtain-raiser, “Blue Mile.” The single — Crenshaw’s third release of the year under the alias, which has largely laid dormant since 2018 — will be familiar to attendees of Of The Trees’ headline show at Red Rocks Amphitheater on November 12, where Crenshaw and the Denver-based producer/visual artist debuted it. UK MC Strategy guests on the tide-turning number, skittering over the track’s tight mélange of low-end and experimental bass in a fluid flex of verbal showmanship. Listen below.
Sonically, “Blue Mile” is a smoother, more muted counterpart to Crenshaw’s fellow 2023 outputs, his remix of Yung Skrrt’s “McDonalds,” which sits in pole position on his Top Ten Tracks chart on the Beatport store, and “Duh.” An emblem of Barclay Crenshaw and Of The Trees’ cool, composed synergy, “Blue Mile” is out now via the latter’s label, Memory Palace.
