Entering an unformed band into a battle of the bands contest might sound like a recipe for disaster, not for Cloud Control.
“We weren’t really very good when we started, I’d never sung before!” laughs singer/guitarist Alister Wright. For four friends that hadn’t played a note together before forming their band for a competition, these psychedelic Australians make a mightily impressive noise. Woozy, reverb-drenched guitars buzz underneath luscious boy/girl harmonies, reminiscent of a nascent Beatles and an especially sun-kissed Beach Boys.
After honing their sound over five years of relentless gigging, they were ready to record. “We all really like the way The Beatles used to record, just a couple of microphones and putting everything down straight to tape,” Alister says. Recorded on a shoestring between bedrooms and living rooms, Cloud Control’s debut, ‘Bliss Release’, captures a beautiful, careworn aesthetic. “Recording live is a really big part of our sound, so we had five days of tracking everything to an old eight-track, then went into this protracted period of experimentation, layering different sounds together with overdubbing and indulging our ideas of how it should sound,” he adds.
He paints an equally vivid picture of the inspiration drawn from his surroundings when writing the record. “I wrote a few songs in the middle of some beautiful countryside. I would belt them out with no-one around, just me and nature,” he says.
Alister describes their pastoral, widescreen, psych as “inward facing”; if this is the case, then Cloud Control render introspection weird, wonderful and gloriously awesome.
Words by Miguel Cullen
Where: Sydney, Australia
What: Mega gorgeous Aussie psych
Unique Fact: Cloud Control use a special reverb technique on their album, they call it “ghetto reverb”
Get 3 songs: ‘Nothing In The Water We Can’t Fight,’ ‘Gold Canary’, ‘This Is What I Said’
