(LP) Crack Cloud - Pain Olympics

While Crack Cloud are clearly not shy to bear the scars of their personal history, this album is a fundamentally forwards-looking one and offers an exciting portrait of a band in a moment of metamorphosis. Musically, the group have taken much of the post-punk and no wave influences that informed their eponymous 2018 compilation of EPs, and totally reinvented them through a sonic kaleidoscope of hip-hop, musical theatre, dance music and downright pop which allows them to explore a vast panoply of different emotional states. Across the album’s eight songs, the group cover a lot of ground, exploring everything from jittery punk funk à la James Chance, on ‘Ouster Stew’ and ‘Tunnel Vision’ to saxophone- infused Eastern ragas on ‘Bastard Basket.’ Sometimes, these influences are skilfully interwoven into a singular whole which simultaneously manages to be several genres in one and at the same time. Perhaps the best example is album highlight ‘Favour Your Fortune,’ which combines hiphop sub bass with threatening tribalistic vocals in a way which evokes gangster rap and 90s Japanese outfit ‘Seo Taji and Boys,’ before seamlessly exploding into a barrage of electronic hardcore that recalls the likes of Death Grips and Show Me The Body. It’s an outrageously ambitious track and affirms Crack Cloud’s position as real innovators of their genre.