Clarence Clarity

Clarence Clarity is an English singer, songwriter, producer, and musician. He has been praised for his unique, eclectic pop sound which was described by The Guardian as "funk played by a swarm of bees", and is notable for his high degree of anonymity to his life outside of making music.

Clarity previously played with several other bands in the 2000s, but decided to start anew under the name "Clarence Clarity" after he made clarity his mantra for the project. He states that he discovered the internet meme Sudden Clarity Clarence afterwards and they share no relation.

Clarity's first release under the name was 4GODSLUV in 2012, and he subsequently released his debut EP Save †hyself on the 37 Adventures label in late 2013. At this point in his career, Clarity held anonymity in every aspect of his life, leading to rumours that he was from Fiji or that his music was a new Jai Paul project. He revealed in a later interview that neither of these were true and that he was in fact from England, but also provided misinformation on other aspects of himself.

In December 2014, Clarity released his second EP, Who Am Eye, now on the Bella Union label. The album cover features his face with a distorted mouth and removed some more of the anonymity behind the project. In March 2015, he released his first full-length album, No Now, and also performed a session at Maida Vale Studios for Huw Stephens on BBC Radio 1. In 2016, Clarence released a single with Pizza Boy, Splitting Hairs, and the SAME EP consisting of the titular track SAME repeated 5 times.

During 2017, Clarence helped produce Rina Sawayama's debut mini-album, RINA. He also began releasing singles with minimal or no advertising, such as Fold 'Em and Naysayer Godslayer.This continued into 2018 as it was revealed he was working on a project at this point widely believed to be called Leave Earth. In September 2018, the album title was revealed to be Think: Peace, and was released independently on his Deluxe Pain label on 4 October 2018. This album featured many of the previously released singles in remixed forms. Clarence also revealed Leave Earth was actually a compilation playlist consisting of all his singles released from 2016 to 2018, and continued to release singles for this playlist in pairs up until 31 December that year, finishing by releasing Leave Earth and Sob Story.

On 20 March 2020 Clarity released an ambient album, Dead Screen Scrolls, as a pay-what-you-want on Bandcamp; announcing an album was to be released only an hour previous.

Clarence is presumed to be working on a project called Midieval Europe. He has mentioned it will be much more short-form than his previous albums. He contributed a significant amount of the production for Rina Sawayama's debut album, Sawayama.

Not much is known about Clarence, his past, or his family; partly due to his use of red herrings, such as stating that he was 7 ft tall and that his favourite food was mud. It was widely believed that he was from Fiji or that his music was a Jai Paul project until he debunked it in interviews, explaining he was actually from England.

Clarity has acknowledged that he was in other musical projects before creating music under the Clarence Clarity name. When asked about this by The Guardian, he replied with "Yeah, I’ve got a musical history, and I suppose I don’t want to have to justify why certain things in the past haven’t taken off. I’ve wiped the slate clean a couple of times. It all feels necessary to have got here."

Clarence has said that the lack of public information about him is to allow listeners to "paint a picture of who Clarence Clarity is first", and that "I'll introduce bits of myself as we go", but also has stated that he never set out to be as anonymous as he is.

Studio albums

Compilations

Extended plays

Singles