Clouddead

A 12 track album () — released May 7th 2001 on BIG DADA

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Welcome to the world of cLOUDDEAD. In late 2000 a series of very strange 10 inch singles began to trickle out across the USA. With grainy photos for covers combined with odd, constantly changing pieces of music slathered in hiss, pop and distortion and combined with other-worldly 'rapping' this was some sort of hip hop, but not exactly as anyone had heard it before. These were the kind of records you sort of had to fall into, give yourself time to adjust to, get used to the sheer newness of. The vinyl was in such limited supply that the records quickly sold out, the occasional copy turning up in shops in Australia, Japan and London. There wasn't so much a buzz as a whisper - just the faintest hint that something special was going on. Jump on to May 2001 and now everyone has a chance to hear what the original fuss was about. cLOUDDEAD are Doseone, why? and Odd Nosdam and their debut album is a collection of the 6 groundbreaking singles they released last year. Almost impossible to describe accurately, the records have had them tagged as a US Beta Band, Syd Barrett with a sampler, even Bone Thugs 'N Harmony on magic mushrooms. The fact of the matter is they don't sound a whole lot like any of these. They just sound different. And if you like difference, you're in for a treat. And if you don't' Well, then we can only suggest you get off now... It's a tricky one, this - anything you say about the music of cLOUDDEAD is probably going to make it sound less good or more absurd than it actually is. Although it is absurd, but only in a way that works. And it is good - absurdly good. Let it in, rinse it round your head for a few hours and you'll be hooked - a little lost, maybe, but hooked. A unique sound, an experimental one, even, but not in a difficult way. Let's just say that it might be hip hop, but more comparisons will be made with Boards Of Canada, Calexico and even Grandaddy than with EPMD. More contradictions. Luckily for us, we don't have to describe what cLOUDDEAD sound like. That's someone else's job. We'll just tell you what it is. cLOUDDEAD is a trio consisting of Dose One, why? and Odd Nosdam. In theory, the first two provide the vocals and the last provides the music. In practice it's a little more complicated than that. Anyway, the three of them got together in a variety of apartments in Cincinatti and the Bay Area last year and recorded material for six ten inch singles, each track six minutes long. They invited in guests including Mr Dibbs, Sole, DJ Signify, Illogic and the likes of the Bay Area Animals. Lacking a sequencer, the whole thing was layered up on an eight track. As Dose One puts it, all the tracks were 'recorded under extreme duress... very emotional times in our lives... The group are part of the Bay Area-based collective known as Anticon. A shadowy mix of record label and Red Hand Gang, Anticon have established a worldwide reputation, first through selling tapes, then through low-rent internet promotion and finally through albums by 'groups' such as Deep Puddle Dynamics and Them (both of which featured Dose One). Yet Dose One's roots lie not in sunny California but in New Jersey and Philly, where he was born and lived his formative years. The best known of the three members, he has appeared onstage alongside the likes of Black Star and D.V. Alias Khrist and has about four full pages of tracks up on Napster - most of them of crappy demos he ain't too proud of. He has one of the most distinctive vocal styles in hip hop and beyond and rhymes voraciously. US dance culture mag Urb has described him as 'an artist who may turn out to be one of our generation's most important.' Already deep into hip hop, Dose ended up going to college in Cincinatti, which was where he met why? and Odd Nosdam. Why? and Dose happened across each other at the '97 Scribble Jam (where Dose battled a then-unknown Eminem) and immediately the duo started working together, first with Mr Dibbs and then as a duo under the name Greenthink. Why? also worked with Odd Nosdam as Reaching Quiet. It was just a matter of time before the three of them started making music and words together, drawing on everything 'from day jobs, art school, rappers, race, sexuality, rubberheaded women, rent, you name it... As for the meaning of their name, it sums up the cLOUDDEAD ethos - not, as may at first be imagined, artsily pretentious, but heartfelt, open and with a self-aware sense of humour: 'My sister came up with the name at five years old,' explains Dose One, 'while making up an unfunny knock knock joke... Who's there''

Hmmm, this is one strange album. It's not really hip hop, but hip hop is probably as close to a genre as you'll get. A more specific description? It sounds a bit like it was recorded up the arse of a slightly over-weight American country rock guitarist while he hums and fixes a car. But only think that if you can imagine it as a good thing. Basically, by all that is clean and pure, 'Clouddead' should be a crap album. Instead it's genius. It's illogical, indescribable, tip of the tongue, freeform genius that might simply be a piss take, in which case the genius is all the more pronounced. Put it this way, stick this on full blast and listen to it from start to finish and, by the end, the world will look very different. There are many albums you can say that about. Genius. Yes. Definitely. - Patrick Neate Mixmag

Zoned-out, squashed-melon hip-hop: there are no membranes within which Clouddead could go insane as they chant, rhyme and trip to a spacey and gorgeous slowed-beat backing of deep red skies. The consciousness is returning to hip-hop, and it's a beautiful thing. This release compiles a series of tens which came out in the US. Watch out for an interview with one of these loons (called Odd Nosdam, Dose One and why?) on these pages very soon. - Bizarre

A quite startingly original debut album from USA trio Clouddead, here collecting their series of six 10" records to signal their arrival on Big Dada. Make no mistake, this is dense, metaphorical, poetic, abstract hip hop like you've possibly never heard before, as lyricists Dose One and Why? Spin tales of alienation, dark humour and dissatisfaction, and Odd Nosdam's beats splinter, falter and morph through faintly distinct hip hop breaks, folk, ambient and noise. A surreal, for real experience that needs to be heard. - Wax

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