Claptone’s ‘Wanderer’ Proves The Golden Mask Still Shines

Castle Hackney is a good place to hear an album for the first time, especially when the experience is hosted by Pitchblack Playback where you wear blackout eye masks, close your eyes and sit in a room built for cinematic sound in darkness.

Claptone’s fourth studio album Wanderer is out now, and from the first few tracks it’s clear this is a summer record. The opening half is vocal-heavy and radio friendly, the kind of music that feels like a golden sunset shimmering on water. It’s the feeling Claptone has always been good at capturing, and it’s here in full.

Then the album shifts.

Around track 6, ‘Black & Gold’ w/ Hannah Boleyn, Wanderer moves into more melodic, progressive house territory and that’s where it really opens up. The focus on melody and chord progressions gives the music room to breathe and the title starts to make sense. There’s a genuine sense of wandering through it, something between reality and a dream. The second half feels like the night has properly arrived: more iridescent and colourful as the stars come out and moonlight shimmers on the water.

Compared to Fantast and Closer, this one feels like a step in a different direction, and a welcome one. Less classic repetitive house grooves for the club, more progression and texture. It still sounds unmistakably like Claptone, which is the right outcome. The golden mask is still very much on.

My one note is that a few instrumental tracks scattered through the album would have served it well. The toplines are strong but they’re on almost every track, and giving the production more space to breathe on its own would have pushed the deeper, more introspective quality of the second half even further.

Standout tracks for me were Treading Water, Wanderlust, Black & Gold, and Turn Up The Love, in that order. Wanderer is out now. Claptone takes his Masquerade residency to Chinois Ibiza this summer.