Cloud Nothings' outstanding 2014 album Here and Nowhere Else was a raw rock juggernaut, but now all of the songs have gotten synthesized remixes. Here and Nowhere Else (In Wingdings) will come out on vinyl for Record Store Day (April 18) via Northern Spy Records, and in the meantime, it's available to stream in full.
The arrangements here are radically different than on the original album, as they range from serene ambience to dissonant synth freak-outs. It's often impossible to recognize them as being in any way connected to Cloud Nothings — Factorymen's "Psychic Trauma" mostly features spoken word samples (not culled from the album), while Adam Miller's "Just See Fear" is a wash of peaceful arpeggiators, and Quicksails' "No Thoughts" is a squalling electro-acoustic jumble. Singer Dylan Baldi's vocals rarely factor heavily in the arrangements.
Here and Nowhere Else (In Wingdings) made our list of "The Best and Worst Releases of Record Store Day 2015" (we named it one of the best release, of course).
Below, read Baldi's thoughts on the album [via FACT]. Scroll past that to hear the album.
I'm writing this little monologue during a quick break from packing all of my belongings into poorly folded cardboard boxes, preparing to move to Western Massachusetts from my lifelong home of Cleveland, Ohio.
The most labor-intensive thing to file away and pack is, of course, my record collection. But this move has given me a chance to take a look through every one of my albums and think about some patterns in my obsessive collecting. One thing I noticed? No remix records in the bunch. Not even an album with a remix on it. The remix seems to be a phenomenon that has passed me by entirely, left me completely immune to its promise of, well, something. The thing is, I'm not really sure what the purpose of a remix is. I never have been, and I certainly can't say I am now, even after releasing an album full of them under my band's name.
One thing I can be certain of is that there are a lot of records in my collection that were made by friends of mine. People I've toured with, people I grew up with, people I met from going to shows in Cleveland and from playing shows in other places around the world. Ever since I started Cloud Nothings my life has been filled with amazing, talented people from every corner of the earth. But some of the most exceptional are from where I've been all along — here in Cleveland.
To be able to release a record like this is an honor, and I hope all of the people featured on this album know I think of it as such. These are not remixes as much as they are completely new songs, using our work only as the most skeletal outline and filling out the body with the utmost individual personality and creativity.
It means a lot to have people as gifted as these eight guys give their own treatment to my band's songs, and it means even more that I can count most of them as friends of mine. I look forward to continuing to learn from them via their music and conversations, and I hope this record can shed some light on aspects of Cloud Nothings that have been hidden and under-utilized on our recorded output so far. And I also hope that Khaki Blazer becomes rich and famous beyond his wildest dreams, because that track made me laugh more than anything else I've heard in 2015. And now it's time to get back to packing.
The arrangements here are radically different than on the original album, as they range from serene ambience to dissonant synth freak-outs. It's often impossible to recognize them as being in any way connected to Cloud Nothings — Factorymen's "Psychic Trauma" mostly features spoken word samples (not culled from the album), while Adam Miller's "Just See Fear" is a wash of peaceful arpeggiators, and Quicksails' "No Thoughts" is a squalling electro-acoustic jumble. Singer Dylan Baldi's vocals rarely factor heavily in the arrangements.
Here and Nowhere Else (In Wingdings) made our list of "The Best and Worst Releases of Record Store Day 2015" (we named it one of the best release, of course).
Below, read Baldi's thoughts on the album [via FACT]. Scroll past that to hear the album.
I'm writing this little monologue during a quick break from packing all of my belongings into poorly folded cardboard boxes, preparing to move to Western Massachusetts from my lifelong home of Cleveland, Ohio.
The most labor-intensive thing to file away and pack is, of course, my record collection. But this move has given me a chance to take a look through every one of my albums and think about some patterns in my obsessive collecting. One thing I noticed? No remix records in the bunch. Not even an album with a remix on it. The remix seems to be a phenomenon that has passed me by entirely, left me completely immune to its promise of, well, something. The thing is, I'm not really sure what the purpose of a remix is. I never have been, and I certainly can't say I am now, even after releasing an album full of them under my band's name.
One thing I can be certain of is that there are a lot of records in my collection that were made by friends of mine. People I've toured with, people I grew up with, people I met from going to shows in Cleveland and from playing shows in other places around the world. Ever since I started Cloud Nothings my life has been filled with amazing, talented people from every corner of the earth. But some of the most exceptional are from where I've been all along — here in Cleveland.
To be able to release a record like this is an honor, and I hope all of the people featured on this album know I think of it as such. These are not remixes as much as they are completely new songs, using our work only as the most skeletal outline and filling out the body with the utmost individual personality and creativity.
It means a lot to have people as gifted as these eight guys give their own treatment to my band's songs, and it means even more that I can count most of them as friends of mine. I look forward to continuing to learn from them via their music and conversations, and I hope this record can shed some light on aspects of Cloud Nothings that have been hidden and under-utilized on our recorded output so far. And I also hope that Khaki Blazer becomes rich and famous beyond his wildest dreams, because that track made me laugh more than anything else I've heard in 2015. And now it's time to get back to packing.