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JULY 11,
2019 ![]() ![]() "I feel good about it." said MIKKEL when I asked her about the release of the three-song EP. "In getting the EP finished I became super OCD about mixes and revisiting the masters and tweaking things until they were perfect. We've tweaked this thing to where we couldn't tweek it any more. Right now we're feeling very good about what we have. We got this things as perfect as we could get it." MIKKEL's partner in crime JAREN CLOUD echoed the same sentiments. "I agree. There was a point where I was kind of sick of the songs but we kept pushing at getting the mixes right until we knew that what we had felt good." I was understandably curious about the reactions that the duo have received to their debut EP. "There hasn't been anything crazy." said MIKKEL. "I have noticed a wider audience and some pretty positive reactions." "Yeah, we did an EP with RADIOHEAD covers. It's not like we're gonna get any backlash!" Quipped CLOUD. "Well we did get one comment on our teaser trailer for the EP." said MIKKEL. "It's about a minute and a half long and this person wrote "No (x42)" so we've had someone trolling us but that's just one asshole.We might be the millionth group doing RADIOHEAD covers but our approach is completely different." There is certainly no disagreement here that TRANSISTOR_1 is an ambitious cover EP where the artists performing the tribute are able to assert their own musicality and not get lost in the tribute. However, why is this the first offering from MIKKEL CLOUD a cover project? "That was all my fault actually." Admitted MIKKEL. "Personally, I'm not real big on doing covers and a cover project certainly wasn't something that excited me at all but there is something about RADIOHEAD. I'm just drawn to them. It is some of my favorite music of all time and it transports me to another place. When we started this MIKKEL CLOUD project there wasn't this design to make our first EP a covers project. Our love of RADIOHEAD and their music kind of morphed into this EP and we've got an interesting art project out of it." THE
ARTiCLE WiLL CONTiNUE
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![]() "This is the first musical project that we have ever worked on together." Admits CLOUD. "WHITTNEY and I met in music school. We were both jazz majors. One day we decided to meet for drinks and then we thought it would be a great idea to start collaborating. We felt that we were both on the same page creatively, but we didn't follow through with it. It wasn't until a year later that we contacted each other but we were too busy to do anything then. Two months after that she contacted me and we started dating and after that getting together to make music was pretty easy. It was even easier once we started living together." I was curious to know what each of them felt the other brought to the table creatively and musically. "All kinds of of stuff." says CLOUD. "My writing is all over the place and WHITTNEY has this ability to just reign everything to where everything is controlled and stays in one place. She just finds a way to make things work. With just a snippet of an idea, she can come up with a a really cool idea and stretch a small amount of content into something truly amazing. Personally, I hate engineering music but it is something that WHITTNEY loves to do. It's where she is a home. Her production influences are people like IMOGEN HEAP and you can really hear it in the music." MIKKEL had this to say about CLOUD's contributions to the music: "JAREN doesn't realize how good he is. His compositions are unique and he has a visual way of expressing the music through orchestration. He's an idea guy. In regard to what he brings to the project, I'm kind of at a loss for what to say. He is super creative. He's a great composer and he's very tenacious." In my own mind, the music of RADIOHEAD coupled with the exciting musical interpretation by MIKKEL CLOUD would lend itself well to some kind of visual interpretation in a music video. I was curious to see if there were any plans for a music video, namely for the song HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY. "There are no actual plans for a music video." Said MIKKEL. "In getting this EP done we had to get specific licenses in order to cover these songs and I'm not sure how those licenses would cover these songs in a visual medium. We actually had to purchase the rights to these songs. We did everything legally." "I wouldn't know how to direct something like that." Added CLOUD. "I've got no clear ideas on how to get a video made for any of the sings. I think we would have to partner with a visual artist." According to CLOUD, TRANSISTOR_1 is only the beginning for MIKKEL CLOUD. There are even a few projects beyond the scope of making EPs that have kept the duo busy. "We've composed some music for a video game called SHUJINKOU which is put out by RICE GAMES. We we're also one of the composers on the team for a Japanese learning RPG and we've had fun with mixing Japanese instruments. Outside of that, we've got several EPs that we want to work on." THE
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![]() "We want to take people on an an emotional journey with the music." Said MIKKEL. "We're living in a time where pop music can't to do that. It's like you're encouraged to be a passive listener where there is nothing deeper to connect to. We want the music to affect people on a personal level." CLOUD was quick to add: "We want to say what we want to say. For us, music is not about a popularity contest. This is definitely something that we're going to have to keep working at." RELATED LiNKS: https://www.mikkelcloud.com/ ![]() ![]() ![]() CONTACT BRiAN LUSH AT:
djlush@rockwired.com
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