Cloud Control have recently toured their own headline shows and have just completed a tour with label mates Local Natives. An exhausted Jeremy Kelshaw, bass player and vocalist with the band, answered a few questions for GIITTV.
GIITTV: Hi, how are you?
Jeremy: I just sat down on my couch in London after 5 weeks touring with Local Natives. It’s fair to say I’m a little drained.
You’ve recently been on tour; where have you been this week and what have you got up to other than the shows?
We have been all over the UK and Europe. The surprise city was Lisbon. I hadn’t been there before and we had some wonderful people show us around. That place is cool!
What’s the most random thing you’ve ended up doing so far on tour?
Heidi likes to learn a phrase or two when we play in non English speaking countries. In France this week she attempted to tell the crowd that our sound engineer was “French, single and hot”, because he is. But the translation let her down and she ending up saying he is “French, single and horny”…
How do you find the UK crowds?
They are pretty similar to Australian crowds I think. It all depends on the venue, how many people there are, the day of the week. All crowds are different.
What has been your favourite gig of the tour so far?
I would say Lisbon, Rome and Madrid were all highlights. The crowds there were very welcoming and we had never played in any of those cities before.
How would you describe Cloud Control to someone who had never heard you?
I’d tell them to go and listen to us. I say we are a rock and roll band, which obviously encompasses a lot of styles, but that’s kind of the point.
The name Cloud Control instantly brings to mind [for me anyway] the work of Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde, who creates and photographs clouds indoors; how did the name come about?
Hey cool, I’ll have to check that out. It’s a pretty boring story haha, we were just throwing words around and it stuck.
Having relocated to the UK following the release of your first album, where are you living now?
Hackney!
Dream Cave has a fair amount of variance between the tracks; was that a conscious decision?
I don’t think so. We never purposefully went about trying to make an eclectic album. I guess it comes pretty naturally.
How did the process differ for recording this album compared to your debut?
We recorded Bliss Release in lounge rooms basically. Dream Cave was in a studio, but we lived on site, which was good because we could cook for ourselves and make it a bit of a home. We probably spent more time on Dream Cave, but in a shorter amount of time. We also did some location recordings in a cave in the UK, some live vocals and a bunch of re-amping parts we’d recorded.
I caught you guys at King Tuts in Glasgow recently and was impressed with the live vocals generally, but particularly on tracks like Scream Rave which I wasn’t sure how it would translate; how do you achieve those sounds?
Ahhaaaarr! We use a vocoder for some of the sounds, which basically means that Heidi’s keyboard manipulates the vocals we sing through the vocoder. Al sings through the vocoder on Scream Rave and Heidi uses it on Island Living and The Smoke, The Feeling.
What’s next for Cloud Control?
We have a show in Hong Kong on November 30 and then we are off for a month before going to the States in January and the Laneway Festival in Australia after that.
Who would you say influenced your sound and shaped your decision to do what you do?
I always wanted to be in a band. I’m the only one in Cloud Control who did really. I think touring with Supergrass early on really cemented that for me.
And, finally, who’s on your tour bus mix tape?
Highlights were Moondog, Pantera, LCD and Holy Fuck.
For more information on the band see www.cloudcontrolband.com/
