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MH-230 cLOUDDEAD - Ten  Ten finds cLOUDDEAD building on all of the elements that defined their debut: razor sharp vocal interplay, quirky found sound samples, ambient drone dreamscapes, lyrics that walk the line between observational and confessional, and a fair share of nosdam drums slowed to a growl. Doseone and why? never take the cheap way out. Their lyrics may range from blurry and buried to sharp and surfaced, but each and every line has meaning. The music and production are collaborative, featuring Doseone's knack for bottling emotion, why's self-taught multi-instrumentalist efforts, and odd nosdam's flair for borrowed genius. Individually, Doseone, why? and odd nosdam are as prolific and fearless as anyone in today's new music scene, but together as cLOUDDEAD they are able to create music that captures all of the promise of their individual talents in an unequaled sound. |
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| Reviews Summary |
| All must hail - BBC / A brilliant swan song - CMJ / Genuinely original - Uncut / Catchy and sublime - Under The Radar / Unquestionably, cLOUDDEAD have arrived - Pitchfork / It’s golden - Magnet / Original and eccentric - Alarm / Strident and sophisticated - Grooves / Promising and satisfying – Stylus |
| The purchase of a new hip-hop album can be a daunting process when one considers the many factors that may contribute to one's overall satisfaction with the product. One must be mindful of the many dimensions of this potential commodity and ask oneself a series of probing questions to determine if an album is truly the best fit on the market. Does my hip-hop album have the proper mix of crunk for the gentlemen and slow-jamz for the ladies? Will my hip-hop album's humorous interludes seem obsolete when I play them for forty-third time? Will I hang my head in shame when my hip-hop album is looped at the local Urban Outfitters retail store? Is my new hip-hop disc truly compact? Fortunately, cLOUDDEAD has devised the perfect solution for the befuddled yet discerning hip-hop customer: a new album known to aficionados as Ten. A new album that hushes all concerns with the force of a life-affirming melodic lobotomy. Despite the popular misconception, Ten ain't your grandmother's underground hip-hop. cLOUDDEAD's final studio labor is a slow-cooked porridge of thrift-store breaks and deadpan poetic rhymes reflecting the congealed talents of rappers Doseone and why? as they emerge from the lip-smacking refuse of odd nosdam's cackling production. It is the well-abused lovechild of mid-nineties candy-striped irony and jiggy dancehall outtakes. "Elvis, what happened?" wonders why? under the auspices of Dose's invocation of "The wooden man and his splintering self / The wooden woman and her hallowing out" and the stuttered mantra "Cotton candy" as the record opens the door to this and other long neglected quandaries. cLOUDDEAD assures aesthetically insecure listeners that oral hygiene is still "in" with the ode to dental drills that is "The Teen Keen Skip." nosdam exoticizes Cincinnati with an Arabic break that smoothes out Dose's nasal tonality in "Rhymer's Only Room" - perhaps the most infectious combination on the album to be subject to constant government surveillance. "Son of a Gun" is the "political" track whose chorus "The makers of guns will never go hungry / May their children always play murder weapons and stick" invokes the image of toddlers rigging antipersonnel landmines in the pastoral fields of Camp David. "Rifle Eyes" reads like a response paper written by your roommate's aderol, with rhymes sung in semicircular rounds between shots of espresso. "Dead Dogs Two" cinches the album perfectly as it keeps rolling the surreal bubblegum rock of why?'s Oaklandazulassylum into a more refined perversion of genres. This record is not intended for use as hip-hop. This album entitles the owner to enough street cred to get shot a round of dirty looks from emaciated white kids at the nearest Def Jux show. Exposure to this record may result in some or all of the following side-effects: premature hair loss, unintentional celibacy, jaundice. This album is the product of inner child labor pains and can be purchased at a record boutique for a less than the cost of 10mg of Xanax from an online pharmacy based in Canada. Ask your doctor or Mush Records for a free sample. - Harvard Independent |
1XLP/Out Of Print