Saturday, May 28, 2011
Cloudland Canyon + MOOG=
Trailer for the new season of Moog Sound Lab on their website, which also includes the
version of our song "Krautwerk," that we played/taped at the factory back in March
which you can hear for the entire duration of the trailer. It's pretty awesome!
Thanks so much to Jason Daniello, Mike Adams & everyone else at Moog Musi
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Hey, So long time no communicate! I have posted a new review from Dusted Magazine's great "Still Single," column. ALSO, Cloudland Canyon has been asked to play at this yearsAustin Psych Fest which is curated by the insanely amazing, Black Angels. It's going to be amazing! Cloudland Canyon will be touring before and afterwards with more amazing bands!
The lineup, ticket info for PSYCH FEST etc. can be found;http://www.austinpsychfest.com/#/lineup/saturday

Cloudland Canyon/Citay
split 7”
(Intercoastal Artists)
Galaxie 500 covers from what seems like a logical pairing of bands, both for the covers and a split, though I’ve heard just a little from either group. Citay take on “Tugboat” with great respect for the Galaxie vibe, a pretty straight tribute, and there’s a towering guitar solo that seals the deal. Cloudland Canyon get appropriately blissed out with their version of “Temperature’s Rising,” more abstract and smeared in a way that connects the dots over to MBV and Spacemen 3. Should be a fan pleaser, but first, for gosh sakes, go after those recent Galaxie reissues if you need to and haven’t already. (http://www.intercoastalartists.com)
(Andy Tefft)
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Henry Rollins plays cloudland canyon on KCRW
KCRW Broadcast 99
Host:
Fanatics!
We got a thing going on tonight! Check it out. This is an interesting show. It goes all over the place and even features a couple of songs that are pretty difficult to obtain.
The Welders track is from a 4 track EP coming out at some point, if it’s not out already. It’s an all girl band from Missouri I believe. They recorded the EP in 1979 and it’s only coming out now. I don’t know why. They sent it to me and I played it in my kitchen and knew immediately it had to be on our show. The Bloody Amateur is at this point, a one-man band in the form of Andy Comer of Teenbeat band Tel Aviv. I don’t know how many times I have played those albums. Anyway, Andy and I keep in touch and a few months ago, he told me he had started writing and recording again under this new heading. He sent me some new ideas the other day and I asked if I could play tonight’s track and he said yes. So, lucky us. Later on tonight, we will listen to one of my favorite Tel Aviv tracks.
Interesting Nick Cave track from the Le Peuple Migrateur Soundtrack CD. New Medications album on Dischord, perhaps my favorite of their three releases. Great stuff. New James Chance record gets an airing here tonight.
Another smasher from Stonehelm! Load your pipe and believe the hype! Cool track the Stark Reality album. It was just sent to me, I don’t know anything about them yet. I dug it and thought you all might want to check a track from it. Great archival release from Dischord with the Artificial Peace ’81 Sessions LP. It comes with a download card. That one’s at Dischord.com. I am loving this one.
Cool Re-issue Alert Dept.: Dr. Strange Records has re-issued all the Chiefs songs on limited edition LP. It sounds great!
http://www.drstrange.com/cart.php?m=music_search&xsubmit=Y&search=chiefs&go.x=0&go.y=0
Liza Richardson always plays cool jams on her show. She scooped me like a pail full of sand on this great Music Of Siam CD. I finally got my own after hearing her blasting cool tracks on her show. Now, we catch up. Great album!
I don’t know what else to tell you, Fanatic besides get close up on this show, dig the waves of jamaliciousness, it being Jamuaury and STAY FANATIC!!!
--Henry
E-mail address for Henry: Henryontheradio@gmail.com
01. Ween - Where'd The Cheese Go At? / Unreleased
02. The Dickies - Give It Back / The Incredible Shrinking Dickies
03. The Welders - Pervert / The Welders EP
04. Bloody Amateur - Companions 1.5 / Unreleased
05. Nick Cave - To Be By Your Side / Le Peuple Migrateur Soundtrack
06. Medications - We Could Be Others / Completely Removed
07. Swell Maps - Let's Build A Car (Single Version) / Jane From Occupied Europe
08. David Bowie - Running Gun Blues / The Man Who Sold The World
09. Cloudland Canyon - Clearlight Intry / Requiems Der Natur 2002-2004
10. James Chance & Terminal City - The Street With No Name / The Fix Is In
11. The Specials - Monkey Man / The Specials
12. Hawkwind - Orgone Accumulator / Space Ritual
13. Tel Aviv - We Got The Computers / The Shape Of Fiction
14. Stonehelm - Zombie Apocalypse / Stonehelm
15. Stark Reality - Rocket Ship / Now
16. Public Image Ltd. - Low Life / Public Image Ltd.
17. The Fall - Beatle Bones 'N' Smokin' Stones / Complete Peel Sessions
18. Comets On Fire - Holy Teeth / Avatar
19. Artificial Peace - Suburban Wasteland / Complete Session November 81
20. The Chiefs – Tower 18 / Holly-West Crisis
21. Various Artists - Cleaning This Highway / Prison Worksongs
22. The Ruts - West One (Shine On Me) / The Punk Singles Collection
23. Thin Lizzy - Black Boys On The Corner / Vagabonds, Kings, Warriors, Angels
24. Waipod Phetsuphan - Ding Ding Dong / The Sounds Of Siam 1964-1975
25. The Jesus & Mary Chain - Upside Down / The Power Of Negative Thinking
26. Butch Willis & The Rocks - I'll Never Be The Same Again / Repeats
27. Family Fodder - Don't Get Me High / Classical Music
Friday, December 24, 2010
Friday, December 10, 2010
Altered Zones Artist Profile:Cloudland Canyon
You can't assume much about Cloudland Canyon. The malleable Memphis collective, founded in 2002 by Kip Uhlhorn and Simon Wojan, sprouted from hardcore/punk roots rather than Can-style art rock. Their echo-laden explorations are as sprawling and majestic as, say, a scenic state park in Georgia, but the moniker sprung purely from happenstance. And despite its origins in personal tragedy, the band’s latest LP, Fin Eaves, is their most pop-oriented effort to date. It’s a huge-sounding record, even though its songs are about “how small you are in the grand scheme,” as Ulhorn put it. Altered Zones' Kenny Bloggins phoned Kip to discuss these contradictions, along with Cloudland Canyon’s new line-up, which includes his wife Kelly Winkler.
AZ: Does the name Cloudland Canyon actually reference the park?
Kip: Honestly, we were driving by there at some point, and it was kind of a joke because at the time it sounded like some hippie band in the '60s. I've gone through periods of either loving or hating [the name], but it doesn't have any huge significance. I think just saying those two words together almost makes you think about certain things-- without the whole band aspect. And I'm always a fan of liking how words look aesthetically.
AZ: How did Cloudland Canyon come about, particularly considering how different it is from your previous stuff, like Panthers?
Kip: Panthers was something more laid-back. We were all friends and there wasn't a ton of common ground musically. It was a fun thing that got serious later on, but it wasn't anything we expected. I was in a hardcore band on Troubleman for a while, The Red Scare, and I see a continuity between the stuff I did with them [and the stuff I do] now, but Panthers was more of a one-off. Maybe the common thread for me is sonic density. I tend to gravitate toward things that are heavy or dense, which can be accomplished in a lot of different ways.
AZ: Was Simon Wojan part of the line-up when you recorded Fin Eaves?
Kip: No. I started recording what became Fin Eaves around September 2008, and Simon went to Germany after we played out. I started recording, knowing it was going to be a while before Simon was able to do anything, calling it a solo project. At the same time, Kelly had Eden Express, and we started playing music together, in our minds, as that. I ended up recording 60 songs for Fin Eaves, and along the line, Kranky was pushing me to use the Cloudland name for whatever I was doing. Kelly and I were trying really hard to write songs together, and it occurred to me, “Why don't we just play the songs I'm recording for this record?” I finally, somewhere in '09, decided to call everything [I did] Cloudland Canyon, which required me to talk to Simon and make sure it was cool. It was the first thing I'd done without him.
AZ: To me, Fin Eaves feels a lot sunnier than Lie in Light. Does that difference stem from the new personnel, or something else entirely?
Kip: It's funny actually. I understand how you'd think Fin Eaves was sunnier. I mean, it's the most pop-oriented thing I've ever done, but, without sounding dramatic, the two years that I was recording Fin Eaves were probably the worst time in my life. Our drummer, Jerry Fuchs, died. My grandfather, whom I moved back to Memphis to be closer to, because he was more like my dad than my own father, died during it. And a lot of other factors I won't even go into. I literally was working on that thing every day, to the point where I just felt… I don't think I've ever been so intense about something. Lie in Light is kind of a celebration of life, especially right about the time when you turn 30-- which is corny, I know. I think there are a lot of changes and unanswered questions during this time. Fin Eaves is really about loss, and existential and actual crises.
AZ: Listening to Fin Eaves, I find it hard to distinguish between sampled or electronic sounds and traditional rock instrumentation. How much do you rely on electronic instruments over acoustic?
Kip: Recorded, it's about half synthesizers and half guitars, processed in a strange way so they don’t sound like guitars. I’m definitely more into synthesizers now, and just stopped playing guitar live. I lived with this record for so long that I almost needed somebody to be like, "This is the line-up for who's playing what,” because it's impossible to recreate that shit. It would require, like, 10 dudes with laptops or something. So someone suggested that I do a kind of "guitar army". Just super loud, don't worry about the electronics that much. I'm glad we tried it [during our tour with Bear In Heaven], but what we're doing now sounds awesome. It required me accepting that [our live show] wasn't going to sound exactly like the record, so I think once I let that go, everything got better. My friend that died, Jerry… you can't replace him. So I thought, I have an 808 drum machine, let's just use that. When you put it through a preamp, it sounds super loud. We still have someone on guitar, but I would say it's mostly heavy on the electronic aspect. We've always had to figure out how to play our songs live after they were recorded, which I wouldn't advise, but that's more, I guess, how people are doing things. It just took us longer to figure out how to do it this time, and I'm finally comfortable with it.
AZ: Do you go to guitar or synth when writing songs?
Kip: It just recently occurred to me that the guitar is a kind of trap for me. I always revert back to it, like, “Oh, I'm gonna write a song, I must go get the guitar.” I've been playing guitar for so many years that it feels limited. Right now, it's just more fun when I'm by myself to say, “You can go write a song with a synth or a sampler.” It makes things fun again; I think guitar is a really rigid way of doing things sometimes.
AZ: That seems to be a trend: bands starting out with a traditional set-up, veering off into the electronic world, then returning to rock with a new understanding. It’s as though you need to escape it to make it feel less "rigid", as you say.
Kip: I'm old enough that I've been through that cycle a couple times. [Laughs] I should stop referring to myself as old all the time.
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the nomadic subject: Best 50 Albums of 2010...Plain and Simple...

50) Warpaint - The Fool
49) Cloudland Canyon - Fin Eaves
48) Best Coast - Crazy for You
47) Woven Hand - The Thrashing Floor
46) Javelin - No Mas
45) Soundpool - Mirrors in Your Eyes
44) Koen Holtkemp - Gravity / Bees
43) Future Islands - In Evening Air
42) Barn Owl - Ancestral Star
41) Crocodiles - Sleep Forever
40) Jonas Reinhardt - Powers of Audition
39) Sleepy Sun - Fever
38) Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest
37) Nurse with Wound and Larsen - Erroneous: a selection of Errors
36) Twin Sister Moon - Then Fell the Ashes
35) The Fall - Your Future, Our Clutter
34) Ceremony - Rocket Fire
33) Xela - The Devine
32) Sun City Girls - Funeral Mariarchi
31) Gary War - Police Water
30) U.S. Christmas - Run Thick in the Night
29) Wild Nothing - Gemini
28) Morton Feldman - For Phillip Guston
27) Rangda - False Flag
26) Mugstar - Lime
25) The Vandermark 5 - The Horse Jumps / The Ship is Gone
24) Flying Lotus - Cosmagramma
23) Chrome - Blood on the Moon
22) Wooden Shjips - Volume 2
21) Wolvserpent - Blood Seed
20) Villages - The Last Whole Earth
19) Boduf Songs - This Alone Above All Else in Spite of Everything
18) Wadada Leo Smith and Ed Blackwell - The Blue Mountain's Sun Drummer
17) Eddie Current Suppression Ring - Rush to Relax
16) Four Tet - There is Love in You
15) Legendary Pink Dots - Seconds Late for the Brighton Line
14) Grinderman - 2
13) Agalloch - Marrow of the Spirit
12) Locrian - The Crystal World
11) Magda - From the Fallen Page
10) Coil - Colour Sound Oblivion
09) J.G. Thirlwell - Manorexia
07) The Soft Moon - S/T
06) Swans - My Father Will Guide Me up a Rope to the Sky
05) Umberto - Prophecy of the Black Widow
04) Zola Jesus - Stridulum
03) Emeralds - Does it Look Like I'm Here?
02) Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Before Today
01) Blessure Grave - Judged by Twelve, Carried by Six
Watch Blessure Grave "Open or Shut" Video
Please comment! I want feedback... good or bad. Thanks.