• News

• All

Jul 28, 2017 Cloud Control By Christopher Roberts

Find It At: {article-find} {name} {/article-find}

Australia’s Cloud Control are back with a new album, ZONE, their third, and we’ve got the premiere of its new single, almost title track “Zone (This Is How It Feels).” ZONE is due out September 1 via Ivy League (in Austraila) and Votiv (in the U.S.). Below is the song, followed by the band’s upcoming Australian tour dates.

“Zone (This Is How It Feels)” starts with a moody intro. There are sounds of thunder in the distance, as well as hints of keys, and then the rain starts. Singer/guitarist Alister Wright’s vocals soon come in, lamenting “I hate it when you walk away/All the things that I couldn’t say/When I look back on yesterday/Can’t see because it starts to rain.” But slowly the song gives way to an anthemic chorus and the clouds part when keyboardist Heidi Lenffer sings a later verse (“This is where I want to stay” she promises). Once a spoken word portion arrives (improvised by a friend of the band), “Zone (This Is How It Feels)” is cemented as an ambitious song. It’s a thoroughly modern track, and a big advancement from the fun retro psych rock of their 2010-released debut album, Bliss Release (whose highlight was probably a song named after a classic rock band, “The Rolling Stones”).

Cloud Control’s sophomore album, Dream Cave, arrived in 2013, but the band’s hopes of turning around their third album quickly were dashed. “I think we underestimated how long that would take,” says drummer and vocalist Ulrich Lenffe in a press release, as the band admits what they hoped would take less than a year ended up taking three years. Progress on ZONE was not helped by bassist Jeremy Kelshaw leaving the band in 2015. Still the band soldiered on as a trio, writing in a small beach house.

Alister Wright self-produced the album, a first for the band. “There’s so many different vibes and sounds in there, sometimes all in the one song,” he says. “I got to make it the way I always wanted to, the way I always felt like the music should sound.”

Wright calls “Zone (This Is How It Feels)” “our album’s flagship song, it’s sort of like breathing out.”

Heidi Lenffer sums it all up: “We surprised ourselves by how much we liked it. The song became a symbol of tenacity, pushing forward despite everything. It tied the whole album together.”

Preorder the album here.

Cloud Control Australian Tour Dates:

Fri 22-Sep - The Metro, Sydney
Sat 23-Sep - The Triffid, Brisbane
Thu 28-Sep - The Croxton, Melbourne
Fri 29-Sep - The Gov, Adelaide
Sun 1-Oct - Badlands, Perth

Read our 2013 interview with Cloud Control.

Support Under the Radar on Patreon.