| Call it weird, disturbing, intriguing, challenging‚ call it whatever you like, cLOUDDEAD is beyond description. As they reach far beyond the realms of hip-hop, Doseone, why? and odd nosdam avoid all the cliches of the genre to present a collection of twelve captivating pieces of uncompromising poetry, first released as a series of six ten-inches towards the end of last year. Built on drowsy beats and elaborate sound elements, arranged into short sequences supporting a flow of liquid lyrics, this album is highly unconventional. Dark and atmospheric, the soundtrack assembled by odd nosdam only adds to the sarcastic tales told by Doseone and why? Doseone in particular has developed, over the years, a very personal style. He is able to increase or decrease significantly the speed of his speech, pushing his rhyming to the limit of sanity. As he battles with why? over slightly surrealist lyrics, odd nosdam works on the musical equation with brio, introducing sound structures rarely heard in hip-hop. In fact, if he relies heavily on samples, he subjects them to such treatment that most of them are hardly recognisable. Although all tracks are over five minutes long, they seems like made up of a multitude of smaller parts, either left colliding with each other, or proudly standing on their own. It becomes somewhat hard to follow both the lyrics and the music, as the direction appears to change constantly. This, however, gives a much more homogenous feel to the record, as if all segments were united by a same impression of chaos. Nothing is too challenging for the trio, and cLOUDDEAD's refusal to conform to any kind of rules gives the album a much broader appeal. As complex as it gets, cLOUDDEAD still remains quite minimalist in form. The band construct miniature stories, set between freaky humour and dark sarcasm, evoking more ambiences last found in the trip-hop of Earthling, or the films of Hitchcock even, than in Public Enemy. As the album unfolds, cLOUDDEAD stage their own commercial death in profit of creativity. This album, as much as the Prefuse 73's recent opus, renews the ties with early hip-hop, when it was more important for artists to move forward than to collect as much money as possible in the shortest time. cLOUDDEAD is already a point of reference, and could well be a catalyst for others to experiment from in the future. - The Milk Factory |
3XLP/Out Of Print