cLOUDDEAD ten

This is the last cLOUDDEAD album, by all accounts. The side-projects will continue, and anticon will undoubtedly release them all, but (as regular No Ripcord readers will testify to, if I've done my job correctly) the change from their position as Cypress Hill's abstract cousins on their debut to unplumbed depths of charming/confusing melodica is undoubtedly due to why?'s self-taught musical vision. This is not to say that odd nasdam or doseone don't contribute, but the almost painfully honest liner notes make it bluntly evident that they fought intensely during its inception, and that the alleged split was most keenly induced by the solipsistic, individual vision of why?. Still, as far as development goes, the group has made an astounding leap in quality on ten, eclipsing their genre-splicing debut with an album that only hints at what greatness they'd be capable of in their (perhaps) never-to-be-realised ascendancy. On the plus side, the fact that why?'s essential oaklandazulasylum exists comforts me that that their blend of commerciality and abstraction won't disappear with the band's dissolution. The insanity-inducing second track The Teen Keen Skip, shrouded in their trademark munchkin chorals and with the same burst of unexpected mid-song euphoria that why?'s Bad Entropy conjured from thin air, shows us at once that this won't be a Beatle-esque dilution of individual talents, but instead a Malkmus-style break towards greater things.

The fact that three skinny art-nerds, none of whom exhibit a natural talent for rapping, have created an album that is both abstract, lo-fi and leftfield hip-hop and yet is as catchy as SARS, makes no sense; that is, until you hear it. No-one sounds like (or has ever sounded like) cLOUDDEAD, and therein lies the appeal: these are musicians who are doing exactly what they want, and succeeding; there is simply nothing that sounds like ten; like all great pioneers, they do exactly what they want, with scant regard to what other musicians are doing or what scene is perilously perching at the top of the tree right now. Truly independent music, in other words. When I heard the first cLOUDDEAD album, I was perplexed, then interested, and then amazed. Amidst all the faux-rebel bluster and bad-boy posturing over Simply Red samples, were a band that truly didn't give a shit, which was less a breath of fresh air than a full body enema. This is what music is all about: unique visions, and the desire to realise a sound that only exists in the imagination, and that couldn't have been imagined by anyone else. I'd recommend ten to anyone who bought oaklandazulasylum; to anyone else, I'd recommend both with some urgency...this is the real thing, and you'll never know how much you needed it until you hear it.