Soul Clap is an American DJ and production duo from Boston, Massachusetts. Active in the club scene since 2001, the group has released a number of mixtapes, EPs, singles, and albums. In 2012 they released their first album, EFUNK. According to XLR8R, Soul Clap "[tempt] the listener into the darker, more abstract corners of house (and its relative offshoots) by dressing them up with smooth, jazzy trimmings." The BBC wrote "they blend neon-splattered nostalgia with a crisp futurism thanks to their experimental production techniques."
Soul Clap tours frequently, often with the DJ duo Wolf + Lamb, and have performed at festivals such as Electric Forest Festival, Rhythm & Vines, Detroit Electronic Music Festival, Osheaga Festival, and the Decibel Festival. They have worked with musicians such as Ben Westbeech and released official remixes for groups such as Laid Back, Metronomy, Little Dragon, Robert Owens, and DJ Harvey. Soul Clap operates Soul Clap Records in Boston, which releases music both digitally and on vinyl. Soul Clap Records is a part of Crew Love, a publishing and touring group formed with Wolf + Lamb and Double Standard Records.
History
2001-07: Founding
The band Soul Clap was founded in Boston by Eli "Elyte" Goldstein and Charles "Cnyce" Levine aka Lonely C in 2001, who met in high school. Record store owner and house DJ Caril Mitro was a mentor and influence on their early genre-mixing sound. They began throwing their own parties in Boston around 2001, before starting to tour around 2007, deejaying on the underground club circuit, where the BBC wrote they began "steadily gathering acclaim for their bootlegs of RnB classics and house remixes." Wrote ResidentAdvisor.net, "their productions established a trademark sound that was as inspired by pop, soul and R&B as it was by house music." In Boston the group began hosting a number of dance parties including Midweek Techno, billed as "the area's longest running techno night" which "hosted dozens of DJs from around the world at an Irish pub in Cambridge."
2008-12: First releases
Starting in 2008 the group released a number of singles and EPs on Airdrop Music, first with The Giraffe Remixes, which was followed in 2009 by Instafix EP. In 2009 Airdrop also released their album The Definition. While Airdrop Records released the group's first 12" vinyl records, Soul Clap has also released music on Crosstown Rebels, Culprit Records, and Mizrahi's Double Standard Records.
Soul Clap met the DJ duo Wolf + Lamb (Gadi Mizrahi and Zev Eisenberg) in September 2008, when they performed at the Marcy Hotel in Brooklyn, the home and creative space of Wolf + Lamb. They soon began collaborating and releasing music on the Wolf + Lamb record label. In 2010 Soul Clap released the collaboration Joint Custody - EP, created with Gadi Mizrahi of Wolf + Lamb. Soon the label !K7 approached all four DJs about doing a mix for their series titled DJ Kicks. About their 2011 DJ Kicks mix, Eli Goldstein described it as “gentle and deep”. After the DJ Kicks series, Soul Clap and Wolf + Lamb went on a two-month world tour together, playing regular six-hour DJ sets. Soul Clap have performed in the US, Europe, and Japan, including the Bloc Festival in 2011.
Their album Social Experiment 002, released in 2011 on Art Department's Jonny White's No. 19 Music record label, was their first commercially available mix. Stated Pitchfork in a positive review, "Social Experiment is a mix without an obvious agenda. It sounds like it wants to make me dance, but it's not pushy. It's not a label showcase or a genre exercise; the only two summary descriptions I can really pin on it are "fresh" (most artists here are relatively new to the scene) and "North American" (for its creators and their choices: Art Department, Benoit & Sergio, Jimmy Edgar, Lee Foss, Seth Troxler, and Nightplane, among others, hail from this side of the Atlantic)."
They contributed to Ben Westbeech's album There's More To Life Than This in 2011. In 2012 Soul Clap released E-FUNK: The Mixtape. Soul Clap have done official remixes for groups such as Laid Back, Metronomy, Little Dragon, Robert Owens, and DJ Harvey.