The Dirty Snacks Ensemble - You Would Do Well (2022)

You Would Do Well is the second full length record by from vibraphonist, percussionist, pianist, and composer, Mark Pascucci-Clifford and his Dirty Snacks Ensemble. The recording fully crystallizes Clifford’s intrepid compositional voice – connecting his affinities to post-jazz, indie rock, modern classical music, and hip hop. “For this band, I often start with a beat – just keys and a drum machine played on my MPC or Juno,” notes Clifford. “I record and loop all the parts, and then I break these sketches down into arrangements for the ensemble that allow the players to be individualistic, while still following a tight, through-composed roadmap.” The ensemble’s eclectic instrumentation includes Mark Clifford on vibraphone, keyboards, and vocals, Crystal Pascucci-Clifford on cello, Robert Woods-Ladue on guitar, percussion, and spoken word, Geneva Harrison on drums, Steve Blum on keyboards, Scott Brown on electric bass, Cory Wright on reeds, and Karl Evangelista on guitar, with production and synth programming from Rob Shelton and Quinn Theis on additional vocals.

At the core of this music is Clifford’s fascination with the desert landscape – indeed, the name “Dirty Snacks” was conceived of while listening to hip-hop royalty, A Tribe Called Quest’s classic, Midnight Marauders in Utah’s Goblin Valley State Park. You Would Do Well harkens to distant corners, conjuring masters’ influences that are reimagined throughout the album, notably on tracks: “No Awareness” and “You Would Do Well”, which showcase Clifford’s compositional breadth, featuring an integration of through-composed composition and free improvisation.

You Would Do Well has themes of the struggles of being an independent artist today, but Clifford still lets his sense of humor shine through as can be heard in “One Must Plan For Success” and “Rise of the Sentient Beez. And then on tracks such as “Showmen'' and “Undertow”, the Snacks Ensemble seemingly morphs into an art-indie-rock band, with Clifford singing as well as playing vibraphone.

The Snacks Ensemble really spreads its wings on You Would Do Well, showing its full range, in a polished studio setting (the album was engineered by Rob Shelton at Tiny Telephone’s former San Francisco studios). “I wrote much of the music in a transitory, and trying time of my life,” shares Clifford. You Would Do Well vividly captures a journey, always best taken in its entirety. “But the through line is a devotion to craft, and a love for synths, beat machines, and the beauty of the desert.”