For 20 years, Matthew Bower's Skullflower has been widely influentialin the noise scene, evolving a signature sound over time to incorporatethe amplified drones, repetition and ?ber-psychedelic noise thatcharacterizes the recent works. Bower's sister group Sunroof! usessimilar distortion-pushing strategies, but serves as an outlet forgentler, trancelike, even transcendent applications of dissonance andnoise. Cloudzis perhaps Bower's most meditative album yet, taking a clear step backfrom atonality and adding fuller instrumentation that threatens to addmelody and rhythm to the abstract sound sculptures. 2003 was a banneryear for Matthew Bower, with the release of Skullflower's trance-metalmasterpiece Exquisite Fucking Boredom, the subsequent tour with Vibracathedral Orchestra, and now Cloudz, which is probably Sunroof!'s strongest album yet, with the possible exception of 2001's double-album Bliss. Cloudzclimbs into a rarefied strata; noise that is blissed-out and beatific,but also intense, shamanistic and loud as hell. "Machine" creates acushion of distortion that lifts a scattered piano melody into the jetstream, before transforming into a maze of electronic blurps, redolentof the giant god-computer in the sky detailed by Philip K. Dick in hisGnostic exegesis. Further into this astral temple of cumulonimbusgnosticism comes the urgent dot-matrix rhythms of "Grasshopper,"followed quickly by the ratcheting beats and lysergic reverberations of"Viva." "Zero" is a bright evocation of Krautrock, something like aNeu! track scrubbed with steel wool: motorik beats smeared withhigh-pitched glitches and squiggles. "Universal Acceleration" is afloating steam calliope bubbling up into the heady, stoned atmosphereon a pillow of Nintendo sound effects. "Tornado Rose Canoe" is thehighlight, a senseless electric guitar solo that shoots straight forthe third-eye and throws off all manner of hallucinogenic streamers."Silver Nazi Suicide" is this set's most challenging track, a richlydetailed 12-minute excursion into carnivalesque bells, horns andshakahuchi that absolutely hypnotized me. The insect drones of"Primavera" and the clean, hicupping digital washes and vocoderizedchanting of "Silver Zero" end the disc on a note of futuristic nirvana.After being pushed into the loftiest firmaments of this heavenly templeof drone, I've been ushered into a binary landscape of mantra-spewingrobot gods. After a few more spins of Cloudz, I hope to master their language. Read More
