| cLOUDDEAD make their tracks short and sweet, somewhere in the six-seven minute range. Yet each is an epic unto itself, with little movements and tempo changes and everything. Better still, none of the songs on cLOUDDEAD are about Nobby the Gnome, or the tragic life and early death of a young hustla on the cruel streets of Life, or anything nearly the conventional. In fact, they're so conceptual, they're not about anything at all: they just are. Dose, fellow poet in residence why?, and sound sculptor odd nosdam have the sense to temper all their abstraction with a massive dose of charm. Consider "I taught myself to survive a four story fall wearing a spacesuit and a dead Englishman's socks." A stanza like that is pretty much an epic in itself, especially when it's laid atop one of nosdam's lush, lo-fi soundtracks, which can bring to mind everything from ambient-era Aphex Twin (or maybe Boards of Canada) to a more fully baked version of that Stereolab/Nurse With Wound collaboration that was released a few years back. And realistically, cLOUDDEAD might very well appeal to fans of Stereolab or Nurse With Wound. Even the guys in Jethro Tull might like this record - an outcome that would fit nicely with Dose's stated mission: in a number of interviews, he's said that he's making "hip-hop for grownups" and for his little sister. The album's got depth, complexity, and resonance to spare - all those things grownups are supposed to (and should) like. Little sisters, too. - City Pages |
3XLP/Out Of Print