Those of you who have been paying close attention may remember that Clouds’ 2021 album Despǎrțire was the subject of my very first review here at AMG; a review that in my n00bish naïveté, I appended with a 4.5. I don’t regret it, but will admit the name Clouds had faded a little in my mind before a sudden and apparently unannounced drop of Desprins back in January caused all the sweet sadness to come flooding back. The distinctive shroud of flute-accented darkness fell instantly. At once I was transported back to that November evening I first listened to Clouds, gazing out of the train window at the blackness beyond.

Desprins is transportive not simply as a continuation of Clouds’ endless journey of despair, but as an extension of it. Heavier and simultaneously more reflective than Despǎrțire, it channels the group’s black, choked funeral doom through a spacious synth veil recalling their earliest material, but now more confidently and atmospherically woven. The duality between the heaviest and gentlest aspects—a tension Clouds have always experimented with—is sharpened. The grittiness of the metal, the plaintiveness of the singing, and airiness of the acoustic instruments are more stark, but in a way that balances the musical and emotional waves of tension and release. In a limbo of atmosphere, Daniel Neagoe tells us in solemn whispers what he elsewhere expresses with pained cries and guttural roars; heavy riffs lift and drums slip away at bar’s end for a piano to take the lead; quiet softly crescendoes back on the ascent of a flute: all flow and fade inevitably out of each other.

Clouds – Desprins by Loud Rage Music

One could argue that the congruence of Desprins’ apparently disparate musical elements owes its existence to how straightforwardly, heartbreakingly beautiful the melodies thus forged are. Whether first announced by a flute (“Disguise”), a piano (“Unanswered”), synth (“Life Becomes Lifeless”) or a guitar (“Chain Me,” “Chasing Ghosts”), all players pull on the thread of the theme before long. The chasms that come from marrying guitar chords with flute (“Life Becomes Lifeless,” “Forge Another Nightmare”), and opening out to stripped-back synth and apathetic cleans, when you can hear every touch on the keys and feel the impact of every drumbeat, are profound musically and emotionally. These are the kinds of passages designed for wistful staring into the middle distance, whose pathos is so acute, it’s almost unfair. “Life Becomes Lifeless,” “Chain Me,” and the finale of “Chasing Ghosts” are especially potent. With a seemingly more sparse soundscape, they achieve what Shape of Despair do with a more grandiose one. I am, admittedly, a crybaby, but Clouds’ ability to bring me to tears in a more melancholic frame of mind is something I hold in high esteem.

Perhaps more so than before, Clouds’ latest incarnation is something that either really works for you or really doesn’t. I’m obviously in the former camp. Like other funeral doom acts, and analogously dolorous music, the portal of sadness they create is effective only insofar as it can pull its listener in. Desprins sees a doubling-down on everything that might make Clouds hard to listen to—the misery, the polarity between the crushing and uplifting—but its execution only makes this project more unique and more uniquely captivating.

Tracks to Check Out: ”Disguise,” “Life Becomes Lifeless,” “Forge Another Nightmare,” “Chasing Ghosts.”



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