Words by Rhian Daly

Xav Clarke sounds like he inhabits a surreal wonderland; a place far more colourful and fantastical than plain old Earth. Whether he’s composing for cartoons or making music for himself, there’s a wide-eyed, dreamlike quality to his work that notices you down his particular rabbit hole. 

In his career as a composer so far, Clarke has worked on animated series like The Amazing World Of Gumball and Cartoon Network’s newest show Elliott From Earth, as well as playing The Beatles’ songs in Danny Boyle’s Yesterday. He’s also a member of the psych-pop group Itchy Teeth, who he co-founded in 2007, and put out solo releases as Captain Fix & The Midnight Honeys. Where some musicians’ scoring work might feel very separate from their pop output, Clarke’s different disciplines feel like neighbours. 

“I think they do overlap,” he agrees over Zoom from his home, which, in reality, is in Margate. “What’s so great about a cartoon is that emotions can change so quickly that things can be surreal and larger-than-life and very imaginative. Animated shows are a wonderful, wonderful place for the imagination to run wild and that’s why I wanted to do psychedelic pop music too – to exercise the imagination and focus on ideas that are a little stranger than normal life.” 

Clarke took his first steps in the world of scoring while working at a post-production studio in London. Initially, he just worked on sound effects and voiceover recordings for cartoons but was soon asked if he would be interested in working on a song for a show. “It was for The Amazing World Of Gumball and it turned into a little bit of an internet thing,” Clarke recalls. “So then I thought, ‘Maybe this is a good thing that I can do as well.” 

After getting involved with the programme in 2016, he wrote seven songs for it before it wrapped in 2019. Of them, he cites the vaporwave pop of ‘Stupidity Is #Trending’ and the ukulele strum of ‘Weird Like You And Me’ as his favourites. They are songs that tackle very different subjects (boomers with computers and celebrating differences), but highlight the varied appeal of creating songs for cartoons – the opportunity to be silly but also share important messages with viewers. 

Clarke’s latest work premiered on Cartoon Network on March 6 in the sci-fi-comedy cartoon Elliott From Earth, for which he created the theme song, credit song, background music, and songs. The project represents a new challenge for Clarke, who thought going into it that it would be “very future-y”, only to find the directors were looking for something “cinematic and huge”. “Although we’re working with an animation, it really had to grab at the heartstrings,” he explains. “Orchestral was the way they wanted it to go and I had no experience working with an orchestra.” 

Nervous about entering that field for the first time, he considered taking courses in arrangement to help him understand the basics. When soliciting advice from peers and colleagues, he was given some important pointers: “Don’t change what you’re doing too much because they’ve chosen you.” Australian musician Joel Sarakula also gave Clarke some advice that would go on to be his motto: “Listen and copy.” 

Using that rule, Clarke took an analytical ear to some of his favourite orchestral pieces and dissected their arrangements. The results of his assessments would then be applied to his own melodies and themes, which sometimes resulted in some odd-sounding work. “It took me a while to realise that if it comes out sounding a bit weird that’s actually probably a good thing,” he smiles. “Odd-sounding arrangements and songs are usually the ones that end up being my favourites anyway, so I just decided to roll with that.” 

To create the score, Clarke used a mix of live instruments and synthesised sounds. “The Logic Celeste became one of the main sounds for Elliott and the Spitfire LABS Soft Piano was perfect for that haunted sound over a big sci-fi string sustain,” he shares.

The directors’ “cinematic” instructions were also reinterpreted into his own frame of reference. “I wanted it to feel like you were watching a big sci-fi movie but from a small television, all warm and fuzzy, with all this enormous and grandiose sound and colour trying to squeeze out of a small screen and its built-in speakers. That was the way I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time as a child, in a pitch-black room from a tiny TV that was mounted up on the wall.” Clarke used that memory to try to recreate its nostalgic environment and atmosphere, finding it fit “especially in episode one, and the more mysterious moments in general” well. 

As well as cartoons, the musician has also dabbled in work on live action films, including the short film A Girl Goes To Dinner. Shortly after, he and Itchy Teeth were commissioned for a dream gig – to record the music of The Beatles at Abbey Road for the soundtrack of Yesterday, Danny Boyle’s 2019 film that imagines a world where all but one person (played by Himesh Patel) have no memory of the Fab Four’s music. 

“It was overwhelming,” Clarke says of the experience. “The Beatles are obviously a huge part of growing up and your musical fabric of life. It got to the point that I was recording George Harrison’s solo to ‘Something’ and I remember thinking, ‘How did this happen? It can’t get much wilder than this?’ Then I got asked to learn ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ backwards, and it did.” 

Working on the film – in which you’ll also be able to spot Itchy Teeth on-screen – made the composer reconsider his relationship with the guitar. “The guitar is a very underrated tool for composing,” he says, explaining that the temptation is usually to automatically head straight for sample libraries and MIDI keyboards. “But, when you’re composing, if you start from a unique place, it will end up sounding different.” 

A chance encounter with actor Matt Dillon (There’s Something About Mary, Crash) in Hamburg also reinforced the idea that turning more to six strings than synths could help his work stand out. “He told me a few funny things – Bruce Springsteen was a better singer than Bob Dylan, there are far too many gamelan bells in dream sequences in movies, and he said, ‘I bet being a guitarist gives you a tremendous advantage as a composer,’” Clarke remembers. Since then and his stint as a 21st century Beatle, he says he’s tried to make the guitar his go-to when it comes to composing. 

In April, Xav will release a new album with Itchy Teeth and he’s also been working on his first solo album to be released under his own name. Monikers like Captain Fix & The Midnight Honeys were his way of trying to create some distinction between his composing and pop projects, but now he doesn’t see too much differentiation between the two. “I’m happy to admit that I am called Xav Clarke and I do make music,” he laughs. 

The first song to be released from this new solo record ‘Magic Arrow’ is the chill funk groove of ‘Underachiever’. “I’m destined to be the second-best side of me,” Clarke sings on it, sharing a worry that many of us will be familiar with. “It’s about that feeling that you’re gonna get discovered and outed – that underachiever side, the lazy side,” he explains from his living room. “Is it stronger than the side that wants to push on and do things?”

Of the influence behind the record – and his music career as a whole – he cites Janelle Monáe’s 2010 debut album ‘The ArchAndroid’. “That is always, for me, one of those best-album-ever contenders,” he enthuses. “I really loved the scope of that album and how there was such freedom in it. It was just a place of the imagination and I wanted a place where I could also do that with music, where there were no rules.” 

‘Magic Arrow’ feels like that kind of limitless record, dipping from soft and elegant, sax-infused instrumentals like ‘Sleepy Magics’ to the gentle psych-pop pick-me-up of ‘Sometimes Everyone Goes To The Zoo’ and the surreal, existential lyricism of ‘No One Understands This Thing Called Life!!’ Clarke hopes the full album will be out in the summer but says he’s unsure about plans to perform it right now. “I’m very shy about it,” he explains. “I could see doing some concerts but I guess I have to get to that place first. First of all, I just want to put out this album and enjoy actually putting it out and that it isn’t sat on the hard drive anymore.” 

Beyond his solo work, Clarke is currently working on composing for two top-secret shows at the moment, one of which he describes as his “dream project”. Of his ambitions for the future, he says he would “love to be involved at the beginning of something really great”, and is hoping he’ll get the opportunity to work on some bucket list things one day. “It’s every composer’s dream to do a film for the Star Wars franchise or one of the great Pixar movies,” he admits. “Hopefully one day I’ll make the music for the next E.T. or something!” Should Hollywood make that dream come true, they’ll be getting a unique composer – one with the ability to not only make our own realm feel brighter but create whole new worlds to explore.