"Cloudburst"

“Cloudburst”, my first single from my third album “Eternal Repeater”, is out now.

Author

Charlie Kaplan
August 20, 2024

“Cloudburst”, my first single from my third album “Eternal Repeater”, is out now.

The Retrographer, Issue 116.5 (“CLOUDBURST”)

BULLETINS

STREAM “CLOUDBURST” HERE AND PRE-ORDER THE LP HERE

Hi there - I’m really excited to announce that I will be releasing my third album, “Eternal Repeater”, on November 1st, 2024. Please listen to the first single, “Cloudburst”, now, and preorder the LP.

“Cloudburst” is a quarantune written about and during the tenuous, misty first few months of lockdown in 2020. It was unclear how long it would last and how bad things would get. The air was suffused with ambient fear and stretches of eerie silence, stretching on indefinitely, purgatorily. The oxymoron at its center – “caught in a cloudburst all day” – described contradictions all around me. 

Musically, it made me think of Claude Debussy’s “The Sunken Cathedral”, a pillar of modal music. Like an unending cloudburst, modal music deals in ostensible contradictions: A static, droning key center, changing colors in the reflection of chords and scales stacked above. It felt the way the days did: somehow both identical, unending, static, and yet always slipping through my fingers like raindrops.


Winston Cook-Wilson’s piano part tapped into this world beautifully: an endless staircase up mounting chords, submerged in watercolor synths that swell into the outro like the world is washing away, which is a bit how it felt back then. 

I made this album with Winston (piano and synths), Andrew Daly Frank (lead guitar), Frank Meadows (bass), and Ben Wagner (drums). Nico Hedley produced it and plays the big D6/9 chord on acoustic guitar during the outro. Nate Mendelsohn mixed it and Carl Saff mastered it.

MONTHLY

#116.5 Cloudburst

#105.5 “Country Life in America”

#105 August, 2023 | “Rockaway”

#104 July, 2023 | “Gas Station Bathroom”

#103 June, 2023 | “Talkin’ French” 

#100 March, 2023 | The Feelies, “The Good Earth”

#99 February, 2023 | Judee Sill, “Judee Sill”

#98 January, 2023 | Pink Floyd, “Meddle”

#96 November, 2022 | RIP TOM PETTY

#95 October, 2022 | Cannonball Adderley, “Cannonball Adderley's Fiddler on the Roof”

#94 September, 2022 | Sheryl Crow, “Tuesday Night Music Club”

#93 August, 2022 | D’Angelo, “Live at the Jazz Cafe, London”

#92 July, 2022 | Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, “Southern Accents”

#91 June, 2022 | George Harrison, “Living in the Material World”

#90 May, 2022 | The Wild Tchoupitoulas, “The Wild Tchoupitoulas”

#89 April, 2022 | Joni Mitchell, “Taming the Tiger”

#88 March, 2022 | Young Thug, “Barter 6”

#87 February, 2022 | Stephane Grappelli and Stuff Smith, “Violins No End”

#86 January, 2022 | Nas, “God’s Son”

#84 November, 2021 | Milt Jackson with the Thelonious Monk Quintet, “Wizard of the Vibes”

#83 October, 2021 | For Against, “Coalesced”

#82 September, 2021 | Pat Metheny, “Bright Size Life”

#81 August, 2021 | The Chicks, “Fly”

#80 July, 2021 | Allen Toussaint, “Southern Nights”

#79 June, 2021 | Novos Baianos, “Acabou Chorare”

#78 May, 2021 | One Direction, “Four”

#77 April, 2021 | Bob Dylan, “New Morning”

#76 March, 2021 | Ty Dolla $ign, “Free TC”

#75 February, 2021 | Ghostface Killah, “Fishscale”

#74 January, 2021 | Minnie Riperton, “Minnie”

#72 November, 2020 | Sufjan Stevens, “Seven Swans”

#71 October, 2020 | Common, “Resurrection”

#70 September, 2020 | Herbie Hancock, “Thrust”

#69 August, 2020 | Special Issue

#68 July, 2020 | Cam’ron, “Purple Haze”

#67 June, 2020 | Jorge Ben, “A Tabua de Esmeralda”

#66 May, 2020 | The Meters, “Rejuvenation”

#65 April, 2020 | Eddie Kendricks, “People… Hold On”

#64 March, 2020 | Thelonious Monk, “Solo Monk”

#63 February, 2020 | Cat Power, “Moon Pix”

#62 January, 2020 | Yusef Lateef, “Eastern Sounds”

#59 November, 2019 | Frank Sinatra, “In The Wee Small Hours”

#58 October, 2019 | Steely Dan, “Gaucho”

#57 September, 2019 | Bonnie Raitt, “Streetlights”

#56 August, 2019 | Daft Punk, “Alive 2007”

#55 July, 2019 | John Coltrane, “Interstellar Space”

#54 June, 2019 | Big Pun, “Capital Punishment”

#53 May, 2019 | Paul Simon, “Rhythm of the Saints”

#52 April, 2019 | Dirty Projectors, “Rise Above”

#51 March, 2019 | Kate Bush, “The Sensual World”

#50 February, 2019 | Sonny Rollins, “Next Album”

#49 January, 2019 | Sade, “Diamond Life”

#47 November, 2018 | Curtis Mayfield, “There’s No Place Like America Today”

#46 October, 2018 | The Blue Nile, “Hats”

#45 September, 2018 | Lucinda Williams, “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road”

#44 August, 2018 | Aretha Franklin, “Amazing Grace”

#43 July, 2018 | Teddy Pendergrass, “TP”

#42 June, 2018 | Dennis Wilson, “Pacific Ocean Blue”

#41 May, 2018 | Bobby Brown, “Don’t Be Cruel”

#40 April, 2018 | Amy Winehouse, “Back to Black”

#39 March, 2018 | Q-Tip, “Kamaal the Abstract”

#38 February, 2018 | Miles Davis, “In a Silent Way”

#37 January, 2018 | Beck, “Sea Change”

#35 November, 2017 | Slum Village, “Fan-tas-tic Vol. 1”

#34 October, 2017 | Steely Dan, “Two Against Nature”

#33 September, 2017 | Baaba Maal and Mansour Seck, “Djam Leeli”

#32 August, 2017 | Billy Joel, “The Stranger”

#31 July, 2017 | Big Daddy Kane, “Long Live the Kane”

#30 June, 2017 | Janet Jackson, “Control”

#29 May, 2017 | Steely Dan, “Aja”

#28 April, 2017 | The O’Jays, “Back Stabbers”

#27 March, 2017 | Wire, “154”

#26 February, 2017 | Professor Longhair, “New Orleans Piano”

#25 January, 2017 | Elvis Costello, “Live at the El Mocambo”

#23 November, 2016 | Erykah Badu, “Mama’s Gun”

#22 October, 2016 | Donald Fagan, “The Nightfly”

#21 September, 2016 | Aretha Franklin, “Young, Gifted, and Black”

#20 August, 2016 | The Dave Matthews Band, “Under the Table and Dreaming”

#19 July, 2016 | Clams Casino, “Instrumental Mixtape II”

#18 June, 2016 | James Brown, “Love, Power, Peace”

#17 May, 2016 | Ali Farka Toure & Ry Cooder, “Talking Timbuktu”

#16 April, 2016 | RIP PRINCE

#15 March, 2016 | Prince, “Prince”

#14 February, 2016 | Big L, “Lifestyles Ov Da Poor & Dangerous”

#13 January, 2016 | Bill Evans, “Live at the Village Vanguard”

#11 November, 2015 | Donny Hathaway, “Live”

#10 October, 2015 | Paul McCartney, “McCartney”

#9 September, 2015 | Talk Talk, “Laughing Stock”

#8 August, 2015 | B.B. King, “Live at Cook County Jail”

#7 July, 2015 | Miles Davis, “Filles de Kilimanjaro”

#6 June, 2015 | Joni Mitchell, “Hejira”

#5 May, 2015 | Kanye West, “The College Dropout”

#4 April, 2015 | MF DOOM, “Operation: Doomsday”

#3 March, 2015 | Bruce Springsteen, “The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle”

#2 February, 2015 | Eric B. and Rakim, “Paid in Full”

#1 January, 2015 | Johnny Thunders & the Heartbreakers, “L.A.M.F.”

 

ANNUAL

 

DECENNIAL

 

THEMED