Precisely why any hip hop artist worthy of the description must take against the name on his birth certificate remains a mystery but, like braggadocio and excessively baggy pants, absurd aliases are part of hip hop’s highly particularised lexicon of cool.
Doseone, Odd Nosdam and Why? – collectively, the case-confused cLOUDEAD from Oakland, California – have obviously complied, but that’s the extent of their conformity to expectation. In fact, so radical is the trio’s interpretation of hip hop, that it’s debatable the term even describes what they do. To date, they’ve released just one, self-titled album, delivered in 2001 as a series of ten-inch singles made up of six separate movements, each with a different musical theme and designed to be played back to back for complete, long-player effect. Nelly cLOUDEAD clearly ain’t.
"Ten" is their long-delayed follow-up and rumour suggests it’s their last, which is perhaps why the sleeve notes declare that “this has been very emotional.” Sonically promiscuous and audaciously adventurous, it doesn’t always work, but cLOUDEAD’s occasional lapses into arty indulgence are a small price to pay for the spirited inventiveness in evidence.
Broken and buckled beats both provide structure and contribute to the fragmented feel of the soundscapes, which stretch the idea of ‘illbient’ hip hop to embrace everything from Faust’s apocalyptic Krautrock to the radical electronic texturing of Aphex Twin and Boards Of Canada (who’ve worked their remix magic on current single, "Dead Dogs Two").
It’s decidedly odd, almost dangerously off-centre, lo-fi stuff, fashioned with the aid of “7 shitty keyboards, 2 recorders, the trusty 8-track, 3 dictaphones, 3 shitty mics, throats, tongues and English,” among other things and is possessed of an atmospheric power that suggests "Kid A"-era Radiohead run totally off the rails ("Son Of A Gun"), the spooked and skronky punk of Liars cut with Company Flow’s malevolent beats ( "Rifle Eyes" ) and Armand Van Helden, slowed to 12bpm and produced by the DFA ("Our Name").
All up, a thoroughly engaging exercise in uneasy listening.
