cLOUDDEAD

I wonder what my mother looked like pregnant

I’ve classified water damage as art

Ruining things

Trilobyte out on the town

Painting things in accordance with my weird ordinance

My style is glass cutter

Delicate

Intense

Shooting out the moonlights with my tongue depression in a vacuum.

Bizarre, playful, intimate, avant-garde. The American outfit cLOUDDEAD were one of the most personal, revolutionary and innovative projects of the 2000s. Behind this moniker were Adam “Doseone” Drucker, Yoni “Why?” Wolf and producer David “Odd Nosdam” Madson. The name was chosen based on a game that Adam Drucker's younger sister used to play with him when he was five, as if to reconnect with the group's most childlike and innocent side.

The three, hailing from Oakland, California, had already formed, together with various experimental rap artists and other musicians, a musical collective that in 1997 became a fully-fledged label called Anticon, which would even be described as "the hip-hop equivalent of post-rock". The reason lay in the aims and the cultural/musical background of this collective, which deconstructed hip-hop and electronic influences, recombined and reforged them into small-scale experiments in which the tracks carefully sought a dark, atmospheric sonic identity, a dreamlike taste for poetically symbolic lyrics, and an approach to effects that deployed both scorched, distorted samples and slowed-down, deliberately paced rhythms, often unconventional. The summa of all this came with the 1999 compilation "Music For The Advancement Of Hip-Hop", which caused a stir on the scene above all for its title and for the fact that it was white artists who claimed such a name and put its tracks together.

With these premises the trio released, under the name cLOUDDEAD, six hypnagogic, ethereal and psychedelic EPs, which were later gathered into a self-titled album in 2001 — the one we're about to discuss; a surreal, impalpable work that upended prior conceptions of ambient music, the hip-hop world, alternative rap and experimental music.

But what exactly is "cLOUDDEAD"?

Perhaps to understand it better we should first specify what it isn't. It isn't ordinary hip-hop, for a start. From hip-hop it borrows the basic form, but not the essential content and intent. The Americans upend the very concept of hip-hop, ideally detaching themselves from it to find a meeting point with ambient music and Western avant-garde tendencies (Residents in particular), blending them with a touch of 1960s Californian psychedelia (the acid-rock of bands like Grateful Dead or Jefferson Airplane, not coincidentally from the same Bay Area the trio hails from) and with indie-rock.

The field of alternative and experimental hip-hop is vast; its history has seen numerous artists constantly pushing the genre's conventions beyond their limits, from Beastie Boys in the 80s to J Dilla more recently, by way of Dj Shadow.

If the Anticon collective can be considered the post-rock of hip-hop, cLOUDDEAD are the Faust of hip-hop. Above all, they sound closer to the intellectual tastes of the white middle class they belong to, to the point that the "black" scene almost disowns the three from Oakland, who are instead welcomed with far greater interest by indie audiences. The sounds become impenetrable, the lyrics cryptic, the atmospheres like a dreamlike trip through space.

The tracks consist of long suites, each divided into two parts that are in turn "fragmented" into several interconnected sequences, or separated by a brief pause. There's no real, precise identity given individually to each track, nor is there any form of linearity or logical progression; it's more a mesmerizing kaleidoscope of sensations, moods and sudden shifts in register, even within the same passage. The song form is denied, and the whole record should be seen as a massive unicum that emphasizes the trio's visionary abilities and enveloping sounds.

The production, deliberately lo-fi, makes the sounds more substantial, sounds that are ethereal and spatial, with slowed-down beats accompanied by alienating atmospheric layers, minimal scratching, schizoid sampling. Doseone's contribution, in particular, lends the whole thing a more psychedelic, acid-tinged feel, diluted into an undercurrent of elusive, melancholy atmospheres capable of striking, dreamlike peaks.

The sonic foundations of this record, unlike anything in the hip-hop tradition, completely overturn the usual canons. First of all, the rhythmic and percussive element isn't at the center of attention but is pushed into the background. At times it vanishes entirely, but overall it acts purely as support for the dense ambient fills that pervade the listen, and above all for the vocal side, bizarre and multifaceted. The rapping itself is transfigured. It's more of a whispered rap (particularly Why?'s, with its introspective, melancholy style) alternating with fast phrasing, rapped litanies delivered in a nasal voice, and playful, schizoid vocalizations (this time from Doseone, with his vaguely freak attitude). It's one of the most significant rap duos of recent years, yet without following most of the conventional metrics of verse or the more standard timbres of the hip-hop world. It's a deeply intimate approach from the trio, one that finds a malleable soundscape to rest its rarefied flow of cosmic sonorities on, close to Tangerine Dream, the restless moods born of Brian Eno, and a futurism à la Boards Of Canada. A record steeped in a post-industrial gloom ideally close to Throbbing Gristle, yet one that shades into destructurings close to the music of The Residents. At times Barrett-esque in its visionary moments, at others vaguely close to the most minimal trip-hop or the acidity of Aphex Twin, but in every case without picking up their psychological tension and intensity, which give way instead to a mosaic of atmospheric expansions. A minimal, hazy sonic collage, with long instrumental digressions between ambient and downtempo, coloured by a sonic progression akin to certain post-rock, in the way it moves beyond earlier templates, rejecting them while at the same time reshaping them to create something new.

This is undoubtedly experimental, avant-garde hip-hop, hard to compare stylistically to any other work, but what really defines it are the lyrics. Music journalism had already long since coined a term to describe albums of this kind, so surreal, hazy and destructured: "abstract hip-hop". It's a term sometimes used as a synonym for experimental hip-hop or folded into avant-hip-hop, but which actually takes its name precisely from the lyrics, which don't deal with everyday or concrete subjects but range across concepts like existentialism, society, symbolism. The lyrics (especially in cLOUDDEAD, which range from deeply profound moments to deliberately childlike ones) rely heavily on metaphor and visionary wordplay, carefully avoiding the rawer, more direct language typical of hip-hop. Precisely for this reason the term's boundaries are themselves hazy and imprecise, and can encompass artists quite different from one another, or far removed from the sounds described here (such as Dälek, El-P, Quasimoto, Madvillain or Dr. Octagon, or Cannibal Ox: the latter, symbolically debuting the same year as cLOUDDEAD and often ranked among the most significant alternative rap artists of the new millennium, instead pursue an extremization of hip-hop itself rather than its deconstruction and refounding). For this reason too, the Oakland trio's work stands entirely on its own.

Abstract hip-hop sometimes happily intersects with related scenes, whose elements also surface in cLOUDDEAD, such as illbient: a current that combines East Coast hip-hop with ambient electronics à la Brian Eno, projecting it toward heavy atmospheric "sonic backdrops" over which layers of beats and synth looping are laid; the term comes from hip-hop slang, where "ill", meaning sick, is used in the opposite sense, i.e. "feeling good".

Coming after cLOUDDEAD is cloud-rap, which was heavily influenced by the trio, and which stretches hip-hop's sounds and atmospheres to generate strongly dreamlike effects, paired with lyrics so surreal they're at times deliberately non-sense. But in a far more systematic way than cLOUDDEAD, who with this monumental work throw open entire doors and point to numerous paths that could be followed.

Odd Nosdam describes the project this way, underlining its influences and the hermetic nature of the tracks: "Electronic music has certainly influenced me a lot in developing a personal sound, because I really appreciate the distinctive personality that Aphex Twin or Daedalus put into their music. [...] We simply make the music that comes naturally to us to write. Every song has a real meaning, but if some of them seem obtuse to someone, maybe it's because they're so personal that only we can fully understand them". Why? adds: "The psychedelic element probably comes from Doseone's excessive use of acid, though whenever we've brought it up he's always said he has no problem with it".

cLOUDDEAD thus proved to be the standard-bearers of a new experimental conception of hip-hop, one that uses its language to "tell" a new and different kind of music, strongly connected to ambient music and electronics, but also to bleak visions of the post-industrial age, and above all to a minimalist, avant-garde attitude that steps outside the limits and audience of hip-hop to open its doors to the more experimental, boundary-pushing fringes — one that probably marks an arrival point, but also a new beginning, for hip-hop as a whole, which after this album would never be the same again and would inevitably have to reckon with and take stock of the surreal, abstract music of the Oakland trio.

Pocket full of lightning wads

and cat calls gush,

like, I’ve never died from thirst

while preaching up the wrong tree

or slinking through the fence

through the posts

because you can fit.

"Apt. A" opens with a brief ambient sequence of reverberated vocalizations and light cosmic keyboards painting a lonely, melancholy celestial scene. After this sort of introduction begins an obsessive interweaving of howling synths, mechanical beats and rap, followed by a chillier section with alien atmospheres in the style of Radiohead, a minimalism that edges toward the ambient trip-hop of Skylab, amid barely-hinted dub basslines, muffled percussion and intense rap intoning disorienting nursery rhymes, at times close to The Residents. The second part turns more spectral, especially in the sudden interlude of pure, macabre, foggy ambient. The long closing coda instead plays on a hallucinogenic contrast between the dark, oppressive electronic drones up front and the background samples, ranging from electric motor noises to playful effects.

"All You Can Do Is Laugh" is even more mournful, with nocturnal atmospheric fills framing the dry, relentless, macabre beat, the decadent rap and the sonic expansions that catapult you into the most desolate streets of a Western metropolis. Small soft inserts contrast with the tense background atmospheres, while the central section of the first part (where the trio almost "hides" from outside light to let the clouds of the cover art settle over the listen) is heavily minimalist. The second part continues along this line, tinting it with more retro samples, vocal distortions and blood-chilling string samples. Curiously, though, the closing sequence is more uptempo.

"I Promise Never To Get Paint On My Glasses" opens softly and delicately, the voice whispering in the background, while minimalist expanses catalyze a background sense of anguish and solitude, followed by nocturnal delays especially in the second part, which is entirely ambient. The following "Jimmybreeze" delights in alternating, through dissonance and contrast, a varied cocktail of video-game samples, childlike sounds, extremely dark background electronic pads, rap that comes and goes, as do the percussion, unpredictable and multifaceted. The result is an almost neurotic aura, which is softened if not outright overturned by the dreamlike layers and dreamy note progressions of the track's second half (which, after a passage muddied by post-rock drumming, then flows into a tenser electro-ambient). Now comes "(Cloud Dead #5)", which contains some of the album's most ethereal, atmospheric peaks, though always somehow distorted, fogged over, so as to retain an aftertaste of unease that surfaces even in the densest, most enveloping layers.

Finally, closing things out, we find "Bike", the usual river of shifting emotions, with its brooding opening synths, jazz samples, near-gospel fills and exotic infiltrations at the end of the first part; in the second part, instead, rich vocal digressions stand out, with the trio indulging in call-and-response vocal games, melodic phrasing, irreverent jibes, and melancholy, nasal chants. The sonic background is stripped to the bone, leaving only the spectral interlude and the more acoustic finale standing out.

In 2004, on the other hand, the group's true full-length came out, titled "Ten"; just as personal and original, "Ten" would move away from its predecessor's more ambient traits to blend in more psychedelic elements, sampling and melodic phrasing, making accessible a dark flow of feelings, delivered using the language of hip-hop, a genre unpopular with certain kinds of listeners. "Ten" would also prove more colourful and (relatively) more approachable, with greater linearity and a richer array of songwriterly, "pop", downtempo and electronic ideas.

And this is also where the story of cLOUDDEAD ends: personal friction between Odd Nosdam and Why?, along with the sheer, staggering workload, would lead to the project's dissolution. Each member would go on with his own career, solo or in collaboration with other artists from the Anticon collective (during these years, work by other projects would also be released, such as Hymie's Basement or Themselves). None of the three would lose their creative prolificacy, focusing on the distinctive elements of the two cLOUDDEAD-branded records, expanding and deepening them. Of the three, perhaps the most significant would be Why?, author of several highly refined, spontaneous and melodic albums straddling indie and pop-rock. Collaborations would also spring up between the Anticon crowd and outside artists, as in the case of 13 & God, born from Doseone's collaboration with Notwist.

Physics of a bicycle, isn’t it remarkable?

And turns our friends and family into cold hard cash

It was our idea first to put dead whales on the roadside

I am fresh dirt, grab your hoe and rake and shake the earth

I caught you looking like a barbed-wire fire escape

I’ve been an ex-president since the day i was born

What do you call a three-legged dog? lucky

Doesn’t mean it’s all valour and vagina

Just because I’ve got poet head and write all the time

You bring tears to my ever-dry eyes.

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09/04/2017