James Joshua Clark was an American audio engineer and musician from Washington D.C. From 1998-2000, Clark studied audio engineering under
Rob F (Robert Fairchild) by reading numerous recording books and putting his knowledge into practice. He was co-founder of
Sinthetix - a drum and bass, rock influenced collaborative - along with
Rob F and
MC Mecha (Anthony Valenti) who was the MC on many of their live performances. Their first release was [r9330] in 2001 for No U-Turn Records UK.
After their debut on No U-Turn, Sinthetix broke new grounds with their innovative, stripped-down, minimalist approach to neurofunk by giving emphasis on colder, precision beat engineering with harder stabs over the bassline, sharper mixdowns and simultaneously, hastening the advancement of the style's sound design between the periods of 2000 and 2002 with a stronger techno influence at the forefront of their tracks. This new concept of fusing electronic music elements with electric and acoustic instrumentation was pioneered in the U.S. by
Miles Davis and
Funkadelic, and further developed 25 years later by producers
Ed Rush & Optical,
Matrix,
Ryme Tyme and Sinthetix between 1998 and 2002.
Also known as "Rob F & Impulse", Sinthetix produced tracks between 2001 and 2002 for several labels in the UK and Europe: No U-Turn, No U-Turn, No U-Turn, No U-Turn, and producer
Kemal's No U-Turn imprint. They also provided their classic "Liar" track, off their No U-Turn single, for
John Peel's FabricLive. 07 compilation released worldwide.
Sinthetix remained together until 2002 when the trio parted. After the split up, Clark released several solo tracks between 2002-2004 under the alias "Impulse", as well as additional collaborations with MC Mecha as "Impulse & Mecha" for No U-Turn. Clark also released two tracks under the collaborative project Impulse &
Submerged (Kurt Glück) for Norway's Subtitles label owned by producer
Teebee.
In 2003, Clark formed
Corrupt Souls with
Telemetrik (Marcio Alvarado) while still under the influence of his driving rock riffs and steady back beats for Sinthetix, and released tracks as a duo with Telemetrik until 2006 when they did their last collaboration together: the classic R.U.R. track as a sampler for [r1428570] album. They produced their most cutting edge tracks for
Rob Playford's No U-Turn imprint in the form of [r227956] and [r1655896] and on the single "Samsara/Machines" for No U-Turn.
In 2006, OHM Resistance released the 2CD compilation "Sinthetix - Gateway" with the inclusion of most of their tracks plus, many of their unreleased dubplates which were popular among the DJ's during Sinthetix's peak period. Clark went solo while still a member of Corrupt Souls, producing break beats and reece drops with
Bill Laswell's live bass lines floating over the top on their collaborative track entiled "Remains", released on [r1262349] album project which was conceived by Laswell and
Robert Soares for No U-Turn Japan and for No U-Turn in the U.S. and released worldwide in 2007. The track "Remains" also appeared as "Wounds and Plaster" on an EP shared with producer
Raiden, and released on
Dylan's No U-Turn.
Clark's first European performance was in 2001 with Sinthetix for a record release event thrown by Renegade Hardware at "The End" venue in London. Clark toured Europe and the U.S. under booking agents Kevin Gimble of Circle Artist Agency and
Robyn Chaos of Anger Management. Over his course of touring from 2001-2006, he performed in various cities throughout the United States; and in Puerto Rico, England, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Belgium, Finland, Italy, Spain, Poland, Estonia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Lithuania, Romania, Hungary, and Russia.
Clark lived in California and was working on a new collaboration with
Jae Kennedy and was preparing new tracks.
He sadly passed away on 10/17/22.
