Ten

cLOUDDEAD | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 16, 2004)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Mush
• ASIN: B0001FVF62
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #248,454 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

From URB Magazine

Forget Ja Rule; if you're seeking the most hated man in hip-hop, look no further than Dose One. With their obtuse poetics and lo-fi symphonies, Dose and Anticon cohorts Why? and Odd Nosdam are redrawing the rules of rap - whether you like it or not.For its sophomore album, cLOUDDEAD reemerge from a land where rhymes reside peacefully alongside indie-rock melodies and fey folktronic accents. Sifting through the rubble of collapsed genres, the trio unearths a handful of precious gems, furnishing "Dead Dogs Two" with snippets of funereal organ, clip-clop percussion and their own plaintive vocal harmonies. Elsewhere, "Rhymer's Only Room" gives us an idea what drunken Gregorian chanters might sound like while "The Velvet Ant" finds Dose relating a run-on fable about barnyard animals. Closer in spirit to Matmos' The Civil War than to any rap record, Ten dares you to let your inner child out to play. Last one to the seesaw's a rotten egg!

Martin Turenne

Product Description

2004 album from the experimental/ambient hip-hop outfit fronted by Doseone & why?. 'Ten' finds cLOUDDEAD building on all the elements that defined their razor sharp vocal interplay, quirky found sound samples, ambient drone, & more. Big Dada. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Style Blender, March 24, 2004

By 

Kenneth Zubiate (San Dimas CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ten (Audio CD)

Well it seems like the madmen had a vision all along. The eclectic Dose One, Why?, and Odd Nosdam have finally regrouped long enough to give us the long overdue follow up to their impressive self titled debut. But for as many plays and as much admiration as I had for that album, it left me with a sense that it was all a test run for something much greater. And in a very Eno style move, they indeed took all of the elements from these experimental sound pieces and put them into a much more slick and, dare I say, poppy package for their new album, Ten. With most of the technical limitations behind them, they managed to put together a solid album, yet in the process left behind some of the lo-fi charm of the original.

The album is much more tightly organized this time around. The short song suites of the debut (a by-product of poor equipment, I'd come to find out) are replaced with much longer, more complete songs sporting some incredible hooks and about as many tempo changes and dramatic shifts in mood as a Mike Patton album but hardly that schizophrenic. It is a very methodical approach best exemplified in the album's high point, "Dead Dogs Two", the single from the album. It starts out as a sweetly sung story about two guard dogs in the back of a stadium over a slow droning organ and sparse drums. But it soon breaks into a magnificent hook with a swaying synth that grinds away as a great break thumps along. It is one of those hooks guaranteed to worm around in your head for days. But it slows into a more somber reflection about their impending deaths, then jumps back to the hook, and fades with the lingering thought of their deaths. Who knew that these guys would put together a traditional verse/chorus style song with such an incredible result?

Even through the internal troubles pointed out in the liner notes, this outing feels more like a democratic result of their individual styles. Nosdam's deceptively slow, yet always effective drums and love for all things ambient, Why's pop sensibilities and catchy melodies, Dose's unique style of vocal percussion and imagist/impressionist poetry all come together and are present in every song in some form. But the compromises are really what keep this album from ascending to the ranks of the first album. The debut had a sense of lo-fi purity that this album just can't recapture with its abundance of layering and crisper pace. Not that it is a bad thing that they took another approach, I just feel it doesn't measure up. Besides that, my only other complaint is that the album really loses steam in the last three songs. I'm sure that it was their intention but an album that's under 45 minutes doesn't need ten to fifteen minutes to cool off. It barely has that much time to build up. On a side note, it would have been nice to have another pure ambient piece. The ambient record from the debut was great on contrary to popular opinion, I don't think of ambient songs as filler. But that's very trivial and beside the point.

Criticisms aside, this is definitely a good album and worth your time if you're a listener who puts interesting music before that futile quest for perfection that many other artists squander their time with. There is a possibility that this could be their last album together and that would really be a shame. I really believe that these guys have a masterpiece in them and they're getting closer all the time. It would be foolish to give up now.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hip Hop? Maybe.... Different? Definitely., April 25, 2004

By 

S*POP "sethpop" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ten (Audio CD)

I have a hard time deciding if I hate or love cLOUDDEAD. This and their debut album are unlike anything else you will hear for a long time (Ten being the more polished of the two ventures). It is a mark of their success in creating such a new style of music that people never review these albums as simply "ok"; they are either loved or hated.

This music is adventurously weird- a blend of hip-hop and screwy electronic music that takes a few listens to sink in. Doseone has a stuccato, nasal lyrical rhythm like no other MC.

So, hate it, love it, praise it, pan it. It is worth a listen either way.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dose One is an eccentric genius...., October 27, 2004

By 

Kevin Satterwhite (Houston, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ten (Audio CD)

For a guy who jogs in a purple suit with his CAT (who he coincidentally named "Purple") in a park, Dose One sure as hell is genius when applying his eccentric nature to his music. Take for example cLOUDDEAD, Dose's group with label buddy Why? & [David] Odd Nosdam. You just cannot label this music. You can however identify and note genres these three are amalgamating. But I'm not going to sit here and analyze their sound, because each additional play will usually perplex me, contradict what I previously thought and/or evoke new thoughts. Like someone described perfectly earlier: it's "convoluted" music, which I feel is executed perfectly.

Now I loved cLOUDDEAD's self-titled album, but listening to it you get the feeling that maybe it was incomplete. Maybe because the tracks on it weren't meant to incorporate an album, they were a cumulative group of vinyl releases they decided to compile and release on CD. And if you broke down each song, you could usually do so into 2 or 3 separate sections ("Movements" if you want to consider it progressive). To me the album just seemed like a bunch of ideas that they never really fleshed out, just sort of recorded quickly and thrown together. Even with that, their self-titled album was amazing.

"Ten" is a much more complete release. Therefore, I actually prefer it. It's not exactly a perfect release, but the tracks I like I ****ing love.

My favorite track is "Rifle Eyes", which is an Odd Nosdam produced cLOUDDEAD song that has the typical moody/atmospheric music, but 'fleshed out' into an entire song. To me, this is representation of what the tracks from the first album could have sounded like with a little more work. Why? actually outshines Dose on this song. "Sun Of A Gun" is ironically structured like songs on their self-titled. Which starts off, "Hunting men carry guns in cello cases/ known with beer as the deer erasers." This album is full of comical lines such as that one. Later in the song, they start naming famous dead leaders and find the time to throw in 2pac and Biggie's name, which I felt is hilarious. Following that part the song treads into one of the best beats I've ever heard with Dose flowing repeated lyrics over it. It's my favorite part of the album. "Dead Dogs Two" starts off with Dose and Why? with their voices higher pitched than usual and extra nasally. It's hilarious to hear them trading words and completing sentences together. After a few more listens however, it looses its comical (maybe even cartoonish) appeal and just becomes a song you will repeat for serious listens. "Rhymer's Only Room" is the least 'convoluted' song on the album. It has a very basic, yet unusual (nice) beat. Apart from that beat, and a very few, very subtle sounds in the back ground, this song is mainly Dose and Why? layering their vocals to sound almost acappella (think TV On The Radio's cover of "Mr. Grieves").

All of the aforementioned songs are just completely fascinating, and there are other good tracks on this album as well. Overall, this is one of my favorite Anticon release to date, and I consider myself a pretty big Anticon fan. Do yourself a favor and pick this up, and while your at it, grab their self-titled album too.