cLOUDDEAD - Clouddead (3LP)

CLOUDDEAD's debut album, compiling six 10"" EPs that appeared between 2000-2001, is aurally dense and obscured. A sprawling mass of miniature beat-suites and Dadaist lyrics, this strange and beautiful 3xLP would influence a myriad of sub-genres (cloud rap, hauntology, lo-fi hip-hop, etc.) in the two decades since it's initial release. Only the three members of cLOUDDEAD - Why?, Doseone and Odd Nosdam - can speak to the group's origins, but in the context of underground hip-hop towards the end of the 20th century, their arrival makes perfect sense. Cincinnati had a vital scene; home to Scribble Jam, an annual confluence of MCs, DJs, B-boys and graffiti artists. While the trio soon relocated to the Bay Area where they co-founded the Anticon collective, their Midwestern roots - in ramshackle basements of off-campus hovels, as the ""cerberus of Southern Ohio"" - would remain the atomic heart of their early recordings. As Chris Martins writes in the liner notes, ""The only reason we know th