Barclay Crenshaw barely gave fans enough time to miss the Claude VonStroke project that first propelled him to international fame.
By and large, Barclay Crenshaw‘s pivot to his birth name project was welcomed with open arms by the bass music community. Now that he’s proven himself capable of such a feat, the Dirtybird don is powering his Claude VonStroke alias back on.
“For some of you who have been waiting patiently, I’m bringing back Claude VonStroke next year. (my house music alias.),” wrote Crenshaw in an email to his fans. “It’s been 12 months since the last Claude VonStroke release and I’m getting the itch again to do some new music.”
Does that mean his work under Barclay Crenshaw is going on the back burner? Apparently not. “Don’t worry BC fans, next year I’m going to run both projects side by side,” Crenshaw wrote. “The Barclay project is way way too much fun to stop now!”
Diehard fans of Claude VonStroke were hardly surprised by his interest in bass music. He told me in a 2016 interview, “If I could have been a drum and bass producer I probably would have traded it for this.” Only the following year, he released his debut album as Barclay Crenshaw.
Then, in November of last year, Crenshaw announced that he would shelve the Claude VonStroke project at the beginning of 2024. He faced his fair share of skepticism, recounting that he “got a lot of comments like, ‘oh I see, it’s a passion project’ or ‘yeah, ok what’s happening with your VonStroke catalog?‘” in a January email.
By March 2024, however, monthly Spotify streams for Barclay Crenshaw surpassed those of Claude VonStroke. The same month, he released his long-awaited follow-up album under his bass music alias, the celestial Open Channel.
It remains to be seen what Crenshaw has planned for Claude VonStroke in 2025 and beyond.
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