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Cloud Rock & August Disco

One thing that can really make me feel like a kid again — the boy spending too much time on the computer digging around band-centric message boards, debating whether to risk bricking my parents' desktop with a potentially groundbreaking torrent, and burning endless mix CD's — is giddily unearthing a new musical rabbit hole. Finding new bands, new sounds, and scenes that are already seemingly fully formed and just waiting for you to stumble upon them — that's the good stuff, and that's what August was for me.

Calling out a few favorites from this long list: EERA's glittery kiss-off "I'll stop when I'm done" is my would-be song of the summer, full stop. Mother Soki's "Rivet Gun" is far icier but sounds singular and otherworldly, both in those scratchy guitar stabs and alien synth tones. After's "300 dreams" is a perfect windows down summer bop plucked from the early-2000's pop airwaves. "Losing Touch" by EXUM is all effortless cool, which makes sense because the dude is literally an ex-NFL player, what the fuck? I know next to nothing about Marcel Bones except that one of their two streaming songs ("I Can't Sleep") is a bonafide revelation. I also implore everyone to listen to the new Gelli Haha album in full, preferably with as little prior context as possible (watch the music videos, too).

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The common thread for a bunch of these discoveries is that they are connected to the Copenhagen scene, which is absolutely bursting with artists making left-of-center, genre-agnostic music. Erika de Casier is a stalwart, and her newest record Lifetime is all but guaranteed to end up on my year-end favorites list. While de Casier's œuvre is one the more accessible side, her peers (Astrid Sonne, ML Buch, etc.) are producing some of the most unconventional and challenging music that's ever so slightly creeping its way into the mainstream (ish) world. I hesitate to use the word "innovation" in this context, but I also call it like I see it, and this is real, modern avant-garde.

Musical innovation isn't something I necessarily seek out for its own sake, or with great frequency — as an alt-country diehard, I'm fully aware of the dusty, well-worn shoes that my current faves have stepped into. Besides, I wouldn't say there's any broad movement towards innovation in most sectors these days (that's just an observation, but I could certainly talk myself into it being a genuine criticism). Where I do see that happening, where I do feel true excitement about listening to something explorative and truly new, is in the band that inspired a lot of this discovery.

I've been listening to a whole lot of Chanel Beads, and every time I do revisit their nascent discography I find myself floored and asking...how the hell can I find some more music that sounds like this? Their only full-length, Your Day Will Come, was released nearly a year and a half ago, but only entered my orbit in January. It was an instant revelation and my eventual gateway into the Copenhagen sound (by way of sonic, not geographic, overlap).

So, without having prior context on this scene or the vocabulary to assign my own genre signifier, I began to catalogue in a placeholder playlist, searching "Simpsons cloud" and "Simpsons heaven" (as one does) to ensure the cover art matched the surreal, ethereal vibe.

And just today, I came to find out how on point that choice of imagery was, thanks to Eli Enis' "Chasing Fridays" newsletter (yes this is the second time I've referenced his excellent work on this blog, no I'm not doing it on purpose, that's just how it goes sometimes). Turns out there is a name for this sort-of genre, and it's cloud rock! You miss one Pitchfork feature and you're behind the times, I guess.

The linked newsletter above really says it all — cloud rock, while still loosely defined, is a sensibility marked by contradictions (organic vs. synthetic, aching vs. detached, minimal vs. expansive, sunny vs. shadowy), which makes sense given so many of these bands are integrating and subverting handfuls of genres all at once. It's especially fascinating how each individual artist goes about this synthesis and inversion of genre from their own angle, using pop or electronica or hip-hop or rock as a starting point and then capsizing that assumed structure from the inside out.

That uncanniness and willingness to stare incongruity dead in the eye is part of what makes this movement feel genuinely exciting and fresh in a way that sets it apart from so much other new music. It also just sounds really goddamn cool.

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P.s. another fun wrinkle to this scene is how many bands remind me of Widowspeak. They've been around since 2011, so maybe this really does speak to their influence, but I don't know enough here to chicken/egg the source. Regardless, Widowspeak enjoyers, have at it here.