Cloud Becomes Your Hand: Rocks Or Cakes (Northern Spy, 2014)
March 1, 2014 at 8:18 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Cloud Becomes Your Hand: Rocks Or Cakes
Fun indie-prog from a Brooklyn band who has played at Far House here in Ann Arbor a couple times. Can be compared to Sun City Girls, Zappa, Fred Frith, RIO, Canterbury, etc., but ultimately has its own sound. Playful and complex, with unpredictable changes, silly voices (but not too many, and not overused), violin, and synths. The vocals on “Sand Of Sea” suggest a straightforward midtempo psych-pop song, but then it goes off onto all sorts of weird tangents, with crunchy distorted drum effects and plenty of detours into backwards effects and flute-like synths. “Theme From Baby Age” starts with a perky violin rhythm, has some squawky chicken-like voices in the background, and ends with a voice stating that America is a flying clam, the cities are pearls, and the people are sand. “Waste Park” is a mellow, feedback-y, beatless instrumental. “Bay Shamps” is the longest cut, and has the most recognizable, stick-in-your-head melody, which takes almost a minute to build up to, but once it’s there, there’s no getting rid of it. “Nuclei Spinoffs” starts out calm enough, but the lyrics are wildly surrealist, and then the melodies get complex and convoluted and there’s all these scary sounds floating over everything. “Peanuts In A Celluloid Bag” ends the album with buzzing, dialtone-like synths and swooping, shrieking animal-like vocals.
The Answer Is In The Beat 
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