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'. 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. 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. 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.

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. 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 this physical release, under the clipped title Instrumentals, feels like an appropriate gesture. 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. But what's been interesting is how its release immediately made his instrumentals themselves the focal point of 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. 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.

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