| In these days, when it seems music has to be marketed into stifling, categorising corners in order to find its place in the world, one of the worthiest approaches to producing records for popular consumption is to disregard wherever possible the pressure to operate within commercially drawn margins, with the onus instead on cutting and pasting disparate elements of assorted styles into holistic, unprecedented non-genres. Hip-hop, being a culture steeped in the borrowing, manipulating and recontextualising of sounds, can, in the right hands, act as a perfect template for the pushing of this method to its creative zenith, a feat that has arguably been achieved by cLOUDDEAD with Ten, their second and lamentably, if reports are to be believed, last record as a group. If ever the notoriously vague and cliched concept of a natural progression rang true, it is in the movement this band's music has taken in the time between the release of their eponymous debut and this. Whilst hardly embossed with an alabaster stereophonic sheen, Ten boasts a much warmer, fuller sound, with odd nosdam excelling himself both beat-wise and in terms of that gratifying sonic detritus he specialises in, and vocalists Doseone and why? at peak performance too. The giddy, awkwardly prolific style of old seems to have been consciously reined in favour of an increasing sense of close-knit melodicism and clarity of elocution, a direction bearing the pervasive influence of why?, to use his impressive solo work as a reference point. Opener "Pop Song" is a spine-tingling statement of intent, a heady, droning loop backdropping what reads as a caustic, half-sung tirade against the stultifying homogeneity infecting the music industry: lines like "Two perfect strangers / Chasing themselves in the windows of shops" are random, abstract images on first appraisal, but emerge as direct, indignant proclamations when digested. The lyrical content bounces throughout between this new-found emotional, often politically inclined resonance ("Son of a Gun", the incendiary "Rifle Eyes") and sharp observational interplay, with "The Velvet Ant" featuring what, for complainants at their arcane linguistic tendencies, may be the definitive cLOUDDEAD couplet: "A rattle snake caught in a wheel well / Strawberry in an ostrich throat" (In their defence they claim this was written say what you see style at a Radioinactive video shoot. Gotta see that clip.) The tension, confusion and expectation surrounding their now well-established cult status starts to tell towards the climax, and Ten transforms from an audacious, unclassifiable stew of sound in equal parts melodic, imaginative and textural, into something curiously poignant. "What has our name become" Doseone intones rhetorically via vocoder on the closing "Our Name," billowing old-school synth sweeps and mega-tweaked MPC beats cascading around him, "A guilty pleasure, and nosdam drums?" Then, an endless dreamlike drone later, Ten, and quite possibly cLOUDDEAD, ends. Should the personal and artistic issues that have led these three remarkable artists to such a drastic decree - never to record or play together again - prove enduring and insurmountable, Ten will stand up as a brave, accessible and arguably triumphant stab at the ultimate realisation of what they themselves have more than once reflexively (and at least semi-ironically) referred to as "the cLOUDDEAD sound." In a wider context, they have genuinely furthered the cause of the strange and other as a valid, non-assimilated form of expression in popular culture, and for that, as well as some truly outstanding music, they will be remembered in the utmost esteem. This cloud, if dead, leaves the sky looking a good sight greyer in its absence. - The Milk Factory |
1XLP/Out Of Print