Cloud Nothings

In my younger and more vulnerable years a hippie gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

"Whenever you feel you need the toilet at a festival," he told me, "just remember that the ones inside the arena get cleaned right after 11:30 so try your best to bake it until then."

And thus begins my memory of festivals: endless fields strewn with discarded baggies and cardboard cups. Herds of pink-coiffed punks and dreadlocked crusties impaled with a thousand miniature stainless steel objects, all bogling together outside a legal highs tent shaking in the wind. My own innumerable psychological breakdowns inside hot portaloos of a harrowing state, the image of which has been indelibly tattooed onto my consciousness. All this to the backdrop of countless bands whom I have varied recollection of actually seeing.  In this way, just as remembrance and the fiction consumed amalgamates into one shapeless blob, so do the festivals of my youth all fuse into one long, undying gestalt festival in my mind.

Continue reading: Visions Festival 2013 Review

If there's one thing native Clevelander Dylan Baldi can never be accused of him resting on laurels. For someone who initially started making music as an excuse to drop out of University, the subsequent wave of critical acclaim coupled with a prolific spate of writing and recording has seen his Cloud Nothings alter ego become bonafide contenders in swapping underground cult status for potential mainstream success.

Continue reading: Cloud Nothings, Attack On Memory Album Review

While the word 'progressive' when used in the context of rock and roll can sometimes take an altogether worthy, self-indulgent kind of meaning, for nineteen-year-old Cleveland resident Dylan Baldi it's an ample representation of his personal development as both a songwriter and arranger. Despite having been making music designed for public consumption little over a year, his aural scribblings under the Cloud Nothings moniker have gone from being the hidden secret of the bedsit underground to a genuine contender for one of 2011's albums of the year, which in a lo-fi scene burgeoning with creativity these past eighteen months or so, is no mean feat.

Continue reading: Cloud Nothings, Cloud Nothings Album Review

While there will always be the Luddite preconception that music should follow the art form of progression, and therefore be about creating something audacious and otherworldly, its always healthy to go back to basics every once in a while. That's why this year has seen an avalanche of artists from both sides of the Atlantic whose mindset shares a similar viewpoint with the likes of Best Coast, Wavves, Spectrals and Dum Dum Girls all making steady inroads thanks to a combination of great records and formidable live performances.

The latest addition to that impressive list of low budget, lo-fi recording operators is nineteen-year-old Dylan Baldi, aka the creative force behind Cloud Nothings. While the live show involves a traditional four-piece band, the majority of these recordings actually took place as a solo project in Baldi's Cleveland home base, and while his obvious love of US college rock and mid-1980s UK underground guitar bands shines through, there's a wave of excitement going on throughout 'Turning On''s thirteen pieces that no amount of technical muso expertise could dream of replicating.

Essentially a compilation bringing together Baldi and Cloud Nothings earliest recordings, most of these songs having previously appeared on numerous cassette-only and limited edition seven-inch releases. 'Turning On' could be described as a celebration of adolescence in the same as Nathan Williams first Wavves long player epitomised the despair of boredom as a daytime occupation. Opener 'Can't Stay Awake' mixes the fervour of an infant Weezer with the good time ramshackle stylings of The Feelies, while the four chords, foot to the floor buzzpop of 'Old Street' and 'My Little Raygun' are probably what the Buzzcocks would have sounded like had they formed in 21st Century Ohio rather than 1970s Manchester.

Elsewhere, Baldi's admiration for all things lo-fi rises to the fore, particularly on the record's title track and probably his best-known song to date. Handclaps, "bah bah bah"'s punctuating the chorus and even the odd whistle a la 'Let's Go Surfing' pop up at random intervals throughout the record, with 'Real Thing' echoing Swell Maps chaotic splendour and 'Hey Cool Kid' giving both The Lilys and Appleseed Cast a run for their money in the oh-so-laidback stakes.

Although 'Turning On' is only meant to be a taster for Cloud Nothings self-titled debut album proper, due out in January of next year, it's still an outstanding representation and more than worthwhile document of the band's career to date, with the prospects looking excitingly rosy for the future.

8/10
Dom Gourlay