Genres: Progressive Rock, Synthwave (Instrumental)
Recommended for fans of: Perturbator, Magic Sword, synth-pop Ulver
Country: Norway
Review by: Christopher
Release date: 1 March 2024
Selling your only games console and abstaining from gaming when you’re seventeen can shape your life in unexpected ways. For one thing, it means I still use the term “games console” which is probably out of date and makes me feel elderly. On the other hand, I don’t understand the appeal of hentai, and I’ve never felt the need to fall back on a pseudo-evolutionary hierarchy to understand heterosexual dating, so it’s clearly not all bad. It also meant that I missed the boat on the synthwave phenomenon which washed over the internet in the mid-2010s, but I made some late in-roads into the genre last year (Gunship, The Midnight) and I’ve enjoyed the increasing synthwave influence that has made its way into prog, from Ulver to Kyros to Etrange. This time it’s the Widerøe brothers—who you might know from the excellent prog rock/jazz fusion combo Seven Impale—forming the backbone of Norwegian quintet Cloud People bringing us synthwave via prog.
From the lunar triptych rendered in cosmic violet that adorns the album cover to the conspiratorial and spacefaring themes in the song titles and spoken word pieces—on “Area 91” a fevered whistleblower warns of an alien infiltration into the highest echelons of government, X-Files style—you just know that synth, a longtime ally of science-fiction, is going to be a big part of Cloud People’s sound. Four of the five band members are credited with keys work, and a huge synthwave aesthetic suffuses Simulacra, providing a simple underpinning for the majority of the tracks, with layers of guitar, sax, and (I GOT A FEVER, A FEVER FOR) more keys building above, the drums driving stalwartly below.
Every song builds successfully on ostensibly simple foundations. Tracks like “Hollow Moon” effectively evoke the isolation of space with a contemplative guitar motif before Benjamin Widerøe takes the track away with the saxophone after the revelation that the moon is hollow comes, while his heavy sax outro on “Pandora’s Hoax” is the closest Cloud People come to sounding like Seven Impale. “Element 115” sounds like what Mario would listen to while driving his Kart around O’ahu in Test Drive Unlimited, an almost steel drum timbre to the percussive synths for a quasi-calypso feel, and an 8-bit synth solo closing out the song. “Chemtrails” leans most heavily into the synthwave, while “Area 91” starts out more ethereal before segueing into a more irreverent beat, sarcastically undermining the paranoid spoken word section.
Simulacra offers pure vibes and yet also manages to tell a story. The song titles and occasional spoken word pieces offer a frame for building a narrative if the listener wants to, but that’s not really what I mean so much as that the music itself has a sense of narrative propelling it forward; the same is true of Etrange’s similarly spacey instrumental albums. Instrumental rock and metal are particularly guilty of delivering a lot of technically impressive but somewhat soulless music, at least to my ear, prioritising ability over purpose. And then bands like Cloud People, Etrange, and Feather come along and I feel they actually want to communicate something besides how good they are at playing their instruments. These bands make music akin to fully realised, cinematic soundtracks, whereas the output of groups like Animals as Leaders could only be utilised for soundtracking documentaries on the history of frottage.
If Cloud People have a fault, it lies in the denouement—songs often just end, final track “Cover Up” being a particular offender as the sax feels like it has more to say. The endings aren’t choppy so much as they smack of “right, that’ll do”, lacking a sense of natural conclusion. At forty-three minutes, Simulacra is a pretty perfect length for this kind of vibes-forward instrumental music, and yet I’d let the band take another couple of minutes just to cook up some better conclusions or even segues. That judicious length is another saving grace when it comes to the songwriting which has nuance to it but lacks a little in standout moments. Cloud People stands very much apart from Seven Impale, but having heard what the Widerøes can do there, I’d love a booster shot of that progressive complexity to grace future albums, as well as to take that core synth sound to braver new worlds.
While Cloud People play it a little safe on this debut, it’s forgivable when Simulacra demands so little and yet delivers so much. It’s an effortless listen replete with celestial grandeur and paranoid tension, the perfect accompaniment to your next Pynchon readthrough, cruising the streets of a dystopian city at night (I recommend St Louis, Missouri), or your paranoid contemplation of extraterrestrial/deep state pacts. And in the end, isn’t that what all of us are looking for from music in 2024?
Recommended tracks: Chemtrails, Hollow Moon, Pandora’s Hoax
You may also like: Seven Impale, Etrange, Feather
Final verdict: 7/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram
Label: Independent
Cloud People is:
– Andreas Sørensen Hauge (bass synth, electric bass)
– Benjamin Mekki Widerøe (saxophone, keys)
– Filip Mekki (keys)
– Fredrik Mekki Widerøe (drums, guitar, keys)
– Morten Olsen (guitar, baritone guitar, keys)
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