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Cloud Release Live at Kulak’s Woodshed

  • Published in News

Live at Kulak’s Woodshed is the new, brief but breathless, live recording from Cloud (Tyler Taormina). Recorded during the Plays With Fire period, that acclaimed album offered nine songs and 32 minutes of quiet optimism and greying nostalgia, mixing the wide-eyed naïveté of Jonathan Richman with the cold-weather pop of Yo La Tengo and the fractured soundscapes of Galaxie 500.

This three piece recording sees Taormina perform “Happer’s Laugh” and “Comet Happer” alongside powerful stripped down renditions of classic Comfort Songs material, ‘Authorless Novel’ and ‘Mother Sea’. The live album is accompanied by a high quality multi-camera video of the full set in this gorgeously strange performance space in Northern Hollywood. The video will be free to watch on YouTube and Bandcamp.

Live at Kulak’s Woodshed is almost literally the only document of the band’s live performance. The bizarre and enchanting studio space in Valley Village was equipped with a five camera setup involving jibs, sliders and a small camera crew around the woodshed. We invited a few friends to come to the recording process and had prepared a set featuring tunes from Comfort Songs, Plays with Fire, and the few remaining songs yet to be released. Other acts including Oren Pine and Mines Falls played as well that night creating a cozy, friendly atmosphere. The recordings for Cloud’s set were mixed and mastered by the wonderful Shaun Oppedisano. I’m quite glad that everything fell into place and that this is the live performance that Cloud can be remembered by. Although the band is primarily a studio effort, we’ve had a tremendously good time playing the few chances we got around to doing so. Thanks for listening.” – Tyler Taormina (2019)

 

 

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A Cloud Tribute Compilation

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Following the recent release of Cloud’s final album Plays with Fire, Audio Antihero have shared The Desperation Club; a monster tribute compilation celebrating ten years of Cloud.

“Community and care has always been at the core of Cloud’s music and we’re grateful to be able to share these reworks of his songs new and old by artists from his hometown, fans from abroad, Audio Antihero alumni, collaborators and even family members.

Across these thirty five songs you will find Cloud’s music and words revised as pop, electronica, drone, flamenco, shoegaze, lo-fi, slowcore, black metal and more. The set also includes a previously unreleased recording from Cloud, along with new recordings from Samira Winter, Benjamin Shaw, Magana, Jack Hayter, Anthony Harding, Lorena Alvarado and more.

Everyone was given the freedom to approach any song they wanted in any way they wanted. Some roll beyond ten minutes, some barely make it to two minutes. Some skip passages or abandon the lyrics entirely but all celebrate the community of care and collaboration that Cloud and Practice Room Records began to develop in Smithtown, Long Island over ten years ago.”

Tyler Taormina AKA Cloud says of the project, “This has been an incredibly warming and strange experience over the past few months for Jamie from Audio Antihero and I to hear covers from our friends coming in. Each one brought to me a sense of nostalgia for the song being covered, when it was written/recorded or simply remembering the fact that the song had existed. And laced with that feeling was the comforting presence of a friend who was singing the new version, their interpretation of the tune many times actually better performed than the original versions, some of which date back to when I was 18 old. I’ve heard all of the covers once and had a really intense experience nearly every time I heard them. I’m not sure if I can hear them all again but I know the impressions they’ve left on me are enormous and speak volumes to the talent of the friends that I’ve made throughout the years.

I’m quite glad we did this for a few reasons, and I must say the main reason is to prompt these friends of mine to keep making as much music as they possibly can before we all get old and boring. Thanks everyone for contributing and for listening and supporting Cloud over the years. For new listeners, I hope that this compilation can serve as a guide to some of the tunes we’ve been brewing up over the years”.

Check it out on bandcamp

 

 

 

 

 

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