Barry Manilow and Seal join Claptone on third album ‘Closer

Claptone has released ‘Closer’, his third studio album, through Different Recordings and PIAS. The record carries a long list of collaborators, and the pop end of it runs to Barry Manilow and Seal. Manilow’s own career covers a full fifty years and takes in ‘Mandy’ and ‘Copacabana’.

Dizzy is on there as well, and her track with him, ‘Queen of Ice’, went out ahead of the record as his last release on the label. It sets her writing against a heavy, moody production, with her vocal left to carry through everything piled up behind it. Stuart Price co-produced, a three-time Grammy winner whose credits run through Madonna and Pet Shop Boys. The album was more than three years in the making, and it arrives as the next step after ‘Fantast’ in 2018 and the 2015 debut ‘Charmer’. You can catch the masked producer on his current tour at Masquerade Miami in Florida on 5 and 6 December — Purple Disco Machine and Cloonee are billed alongside him, with Vintage Culture arriving as special guest.