cLOUDDEAD

Experimental hip-hop masterpiece from cLOUDDEAD, the most well-known and acclaimed outfit in the Anticon crew.

The trio’s debut album quickly reached cult status for its unorthodox lyrics, rapping, and production, which draws from ambient, electronic, post-rock, experimental music, and psychedelia. cLOUDDEAD was predictive of a number of hip-hop subgenres which came after it, chiefly lo-fi and cloud rap, and to this date, it remains a surreal, sometimes perplexing listen, primed for a late night listen or melting away to in the scorching sun. Think of it as the midway point between Y2K abstract hip-hop and the mind-bending ambience of Boards Of Canada, William Basinski, and The Caretaker.

cLOUDDEAD's debut album, compiling six 10" EPs that appeared between 2000-2001, is aurally dense and obscured. A sprawling mass of miniature beat-suites and Dadaist lyrics, this strange and beautiful 3xLP would influence a myriad of sub-genres (cloud rap, hauntology, lo-fi hip-hop, etc.) in the two decades since its initial release.

Only the three members of cLOUDDEAD – Why?, Doseone and Odd Nosdam – can speak to the group's origins, but in the context of underground hip-hop towards the end of the 20th century, their arrival makes perfect sense. Cincinnati had a vital scene; home to Scribble Jam, an annual confluence of MCs, DJs, B-boys and graffiti artists. While the trio soon relocated to the Bay Area where they co-founded the Anticon collective, their Midwestern roots – in ramshackle basements of off-campus hovels, as the "cerberus of Southern Ohio" – would remain the atomic heart of their early recordings.

As Chris Martins writes in the liner notes, "The only reason we know their names today is because of how loudly and curiously they aired their insularity. They rewrote the entire world as they knew it through their own fucked perspective, and when those mysterious 10-inches started popping up in record shops, it wasn't just a puzzle to investigate: there seemed to be a whole cosmology hidden in those grooves."

Each side of the album represents one of those elusive 10-inches, each embodying a universe unto itself. Opening salvo "Apt. A" and "And All You Can Do Is Laugh" are perhaps most emblematic of the cLOUDDEAD experience. Why? and Dose create a new language through boundless non-sequiturs, sing-song non-choruses and call-and-response hooks, while Nosdam's dexterous production shifts from crackling ambience of Flying Saucer Attack to tight Ohio Players drum breaks and oblique film samples.

Taken all together, cLOUDDEAD is an original interpretation of hip-hop in the surreal Y2K glow – a bizarre meeting point between William Basinski's Disintegration Loops and MF DOOM's Operation: Doomsday. All it took was a Dr. Sample SP-202, Tascam cassette eight-track and cheap RadioShack mic. There's truly nothing like it.

• First album by experimental hip-hop group cLOUDDEAD
• Originally released in 2001 on Mush (Big Dada in UK)
• Recommended for fans of El-P, Madvillain and Boards Of Canada
• Liner notes by Chris Martins
• Comes with poster
• First-time reissue