More than Mere Concept, ‘Innermission: MAGMA or A Propagandous Film by Wes Side Anderson’ is a Cinematic Exhibit of Clairmont The Second’s Self-Reliant Range
Evan Dale | September 9, 2026
Concept has always been at the heart of the artfully vast and complex spaces that Clairmont The Second navigates. It comes with the territory of an artist who painstakingly oversees the details at every corner of his sonic spaces. His sound is wide-ranging and hard to define, yet there’s no mistaking it when you hear it, bleeding with nostalgic synths, underlined by the hum of an emotive register, and powered by a cascading flow of poetics. As a producer, a multi-instrumentalist, a rapper, and a vocalist, he’s got a texture that would be impossible to mimic. As much as other artists wish they could unearth the uniqueness and ubiquity of that signature, it’s ingrained in the authenticity of the path he’s traversed as an artist and a man.
His is an aesthetic refined and re-refined through more than a decade of consistent self-evolution and unrelenting self-reliance at the core of the Toronto area scene. It’s deeper than that, too – his entire life has in many ways been in the orbit of music. He oversees nearly every aspect of his artistic realm, tapping into the range of his skillset, trimming and detailing each work to its final form. He owns his art almost holistically, along with consistent photographic and videographic additions to his audiovisual journey, by way of the ever-present Beee.
Even amongst the natural leanings towards conceptualizing collective works that come with his all-inclusive approach to crafting sound, space, and storyline, his newest project, Innermission: MAGMA or A Propagandous Film by Wes Side Anderson – from a listener’s initial interaction with its title – feels as though it would about to be particularly concept-driven.
But the project plays cohesively without being thematically overdrawn, also borrowing from its interconnection and tie-ins with Clairmont The Second’s prior works. Rather than leaning too far into its titular directive to drive the discourse – with the exception of its mounting cinematic scope – the project leans first and foremost on his immense range – and the well-crafted bridges between each corner of his sound.
It’s high time we tell you to head to Bandcamp for the project’s full, explicit version to be able to absorb it as it was meant to be. You won’t find quite what you’re looking for elsewhere, short of the project’s sweeping intro, Evil Falls, which sets the stage for the immersive, filmic transport of Innermission: MAGMA or A Propagandous Film by Wes Side Anderson’s score-like identity.
WarnDem came as the EP’s sole leading single, just a day prior to the project’s eventual September 1 release. It was – is – either, to a first-time listener, a tremendous introduction to that signature, infallible Clairmont The Second sound, or, for a seasoned Clairmont The Second fan, a tremendous addition to the mosaic of unpredictable, keystroke-driven multi-part compositional cuts he’s been weaving since The Ave in You acted as his first wide-reaching hit in 2017. Eerie, unnerving synths creep and crawl their way into frame before speeding up to the pace of the drums that kick in. Soon after, so does a waterfall of Clairmont’s lyricism.
Bookended by the Bandcamp-exclusive intro and WarnDem is a display of Clairmont The Second’s pervasive knack for the bass-thudding heater. Overtop a whirlwind of videogame-dizzying chords, he unleashes a torrent of the kind of nonchalant bars that would feel much more hard-earned coming from another rapper. But here, Clairmont delivers it with ease, and Pleez emerges as one of the project’s most anthemic moments.
Where Pleez is hard-hitting, hII Alert is lightning-fast – both the beat and Clairmont’s flow twist and turn across another piercing beat, occasionally tumbling into a soulfully executed hook. Then, Da Moon slows it down and opens up the most poetically vulnerable cut of the project. It’s a diary-driven track, opening the listener, too, to many of the realities that continue to shape Clairmont’s multidimensionalism kaleidoscoped into sound. And finally, the project closes with the hometown anthem, Mainsha, sonic soul-food Toronto style, jerk and oxtail for all.
In just over 16 minutes, Clairmont The Second puts on a clinic of his own far-reaching range. Innermission: MAGMA or A Propagandous Film by Wes Side Anderson rips through the emotional and auditory rollercoaster of its many quick cuts, to end scene again holistically in control of a musical range that few, if any other artists could wrangle into something so seamless.