Crack Cloud, PAIN OLYMPICS
Meat Machine

If we say ‘trance music’, your mind probably jumps to dark ambience, perhaps drum and bass, maybe even dream-pop – well, if you want to feel like you’re jumping into a trance so strong it feels like an all-new dimension, bang on the Ouster Stew, the new one from Vancouver funk-punks Crack Cloud. You won’t be disappointed.

The dizzyingly layered, drilling vocals are just skimming the surface of the intense coolness of the track. It’s a jam to its very core, with dance-ready instrumental lines you can feel the tune squeezing out of, a monumental drum break in the middle, and an overall brightness that can only be heard in bands that are as truly collective as Crack Cloud are.

Ouster Stew is taken from upcoming LP PAIN OLYMPICS, and with 2019’s release The Next Fix, we’re convinced that the record is going to be something really special. Equally hypnotic, The Next Fix features euphorically melancholy trumpet salutes and haunting spoken word sections that bolster Crack Cloud’s intense personal vulnerability, borne from their group’s situation at the heart of Vancouver’s opiate crisis frontlines. The Next Fix is slow building and as grinding as it is ethereal, a magnetic mishmash of genres and influences, and promising hint at the kind of experimentation we can expect from PAIN OLYMPICS.

Inviting comparison to music as diverse as Seo Taji and Boys, Death Grips, Show Me The Body, to The Sound Of Music, 90s anime, to hints of 2010s pop hooks, for Crack Cloud it seems the sky’s the limit. And there’s no doubt that on PAIN OLYMPICS we’ll see them smashing through the atmosphere.

PAIN OLYMPICS is out July 17th.