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CLOUDDEAD's debut album, compiling six 10Inch 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 . 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 Inchcerberus of Southern OhioInch - would remain the atomic heart of their early recordings. As Chris Martins writes in the liner notes, InchThe only reason we know their names today is because of how loudly and curiously they aired their insularity. They rewrote the entire world as they knew it through their own fucked perspective, and when those mysterious 10-inches started popping up in record shops, it wasn't just a puzzle to investigate there seemed to be a whole cosmology hidden in those grooves.Inch Each side of the album represents one of those elusive 10-inches, each embodying a universe unto itself. Opening salvo InchApt. AInch and InchAnd All You Can Do Is LaughInch are perhaps most emblematic of the cLOUDDEAD experience. Why? and Dose create a new language through boundless non-sequiturs, sing-song non-choruses and call-and-response hooks, while Nosdam's dexterous production shifts from crackling ambience of Flying Saucer Attack to tight Ohio Players drum breaks and oblique film samples. Taken all together, cLOUDDEAD is an original inte
