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 clichéd 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 Dose One & 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
‘the label stapled a speaker to the back of a
sheep’s throat…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’,
Dose One intones rhetorically via vocoder on the closing
Our Name, billowing old-school synth sweeps
and mega-tweaked MPC beats cascading around him, ‘but
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.
John Stevens
4.8/5 |
