You listen to LOCAL NATIVES, TAME IMPALA and ALT-J? In that case, this band must not be new to you. CLOUD CONTROL from Australia recently released their second album Dream Cave. NOTHING BUT HOPE AND PASSION sat down with Alister (lead singer) and Jeremy (bass) to chat about the album, legendary bands and music streaming services.
You wikipedia still says, that you met for rehearsals for ‘The Pirates of Penzance.’ Maybe you should change that some day.
Jeremy: Who owns Wikipedia? Really, it’s full of lies! (laughs)
Alister: We should put that down, that is fake. We should say we were members at the NASA space program and then decided to form a band. And that we had a number one Hit in the 70’s.
We will see how that works out! Your highly acclaimed second Album “Dream Cave” has been released in Europe only one month ago. Has it really been recorded in a cave and are the sounds – the dripping in the end, the hall – authentic?
A: We did some of the stuff for the album in a real cave – only a little bit. The vocals for the song Dream Cave are recorded there and also some other stuff like the dripping, yes. The rest of the album was recorded in the studio, but even there our producer made like a synthetic cave, with candles and darker light, which was so nice.
“Dream Cave” seems to hold many different genres – for example, when you compare the songs “Dojo Rising” and “Dream Cave”. How come?
J: I think that is just a reflectionof where we are all at. We all listen to a lot of different music. And I think it is pretty typical of a band now – people are just more aware of different types of music and everyone digs into different things. I guess it expresses something about contemporary bands.
You already supported bands like ARCADE FIRE, THE TEMPER TRAP, Weezer and VAMPIRE WEEKEND. How is it to work with bands you probably have been listening to when you were younger?
J: You know what, WEEZER was the band – their second album was the first album I ever loved as a kid. Like, LOVED. We were touring with them and that really meant a lot to me. We got to know them a little bit. It was an out-of-this-world-extreme.
A: For me it was ARCADE FIRE. I think they are one of the few modern legendary bands. When we met them they were so cool, just like you would expect them to be. Really chilled out and down to earth. Lovely people.
You recently asked your fans to do a Spotify playlist for the van. Music streaming services make these kind of things so much easier – what do you think about the digitalization of music? This is always interesting to hear from a bands perspective.
J: I had a conversation recently about this. I think what will happen in 5 years is that bands will just start releasing one or two songs continuously, rather than full albums. Everything today is only about what’s new, but albums get old so quickly.
CLOUD CONTROL: “People get frightened of passion”
Also given that the length of an album was originally fitted for the capacity of mediums like Vinyl or CD.
J: Yes. I understand why people are talking about that. But at the same time it’s kind of frustrating. I like the idea of an album being a collection of songs that fit together, and I like the amount of time that you can sit down and listen to the record. Singles are so sporadic, you cant really get into anything, it is over before it starts.
A: The thing is that there is just so much music, and streaming services make it so easy to jump between different albums and it gets harder to develop a good relationship to them. For me, an album lasts 6 months where I listen to it a lot. But when you keep being offered a lot of other music that you might like, it is hard to find the time to really get into something. So someday, it might be a better choice for bands only to put out two or three songs every now and then. But the Industry still is really album driven.
You are very active on social media. Lauren Mayberry, singer of CHVRCHES, recently complained about sexist facebook messages of fans. Do you read all of your messages – and did such things happen to you already?
J: We do. We read all of our facebook messages and we mostly get back to them. We get a lot messages like: ‘You are great, you rock’. But also: ‘Can you give a shout out to my brother who is coming to the show, he has cancer’. So, people ask really personal stuff. We like to get back to them, but as you get requests like that all the time you can’t interrupt for this, otherwise you will end up doing this between every song. So we have to say no, but try to find nice words for them, and wish them luck for the future. With sexist or rude messages or shouts after the show – we are not as big as CHVRCHES, but it happens sometimes. I mean it is just like the schoolyard. They try to get a reaction and walk away. That’s it.
Non-redarding if you have ever been there or not – what would be your favourite city or place to play a show in the future?
A: The Paradiso in Amsterdam – and we will play there next week with LOCAL NATIVES!
What does hope mean to you? What does passion mean to you?
J: I like it when people talk passionately without being angry. I was watching Lucas Neil who is the austrailian football captain. Reporters were telling him he should step down, and he told them that he was picked by the manager, and that it is such an honour for him. When reporter told him he was angry, he said: ‘That is not anger, that is passion’. I think that was such a good definition because people get frightened of passion but actually it is something you need to embrace. It is the same with us discussing within the band.
A: Hope might the thing you sometimes don’t want to say out loud because it might not happen, but passion is when you really like to do something specific, and don’t care about anything else. Many like to mark these people as nerds, but in fact they are so cool. I mean, evertime you will do something special, you will be put in a box anyway.
J: Yes – because people like to have things ordered. But the world really is chaos.
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