Eclectic warm-front synthy missives
Who He?
The electronic music moniker of Walthamstow’s Martin Thompson, Bit Cloudy makes fuzzy synth paeans influenced by the output of the Border Community and Ghostly labels, offbeat dance acts Caribou and Four Tet, and classic hip hop.
Why Bit Cloudy?
After remixes for the Lo Recordings and Where It’s At Is Where You Are labels, Thompson’s new EP, ‘U Vacuum’ finds him exploring various styles. If the title track has a fragile beauty in its overlapping machine tones and live percussion, ‘Hours To Kill (Mono Image)’ is a beat-driven soundtrack of burbling machine bass and overcast keys. Throughout, there’s an enjoyable smudginess that points to his Bit Cloudy name.“It’s a phrase that often describes the weather and general feel of London,” Thompson says. “There’s obviously a digital dimension to ‘Bit’, and an inference that I’m somehow clouding or blurring the data that makes up the sound.”
Tell Us More…
Thompson DJs and performs live with video projections he creates himself, and has supported everyone from Talvin Singh to Lætitia Sadier. He’s also a guitarist in Lost Map Records’ band Firestations, but his electronic project allows him more flexibility. “There’s five people in the band, so we’re lucky if we can get together once a week, whereas I can work on my own tracks any time,” he says. “I am contributing a lot of synths to our current recordings though, so my interests are converging.” Thompson has plenty of new tracks in the works, so the outlook is bright.
‘U Vacuum’ is available on Bandcamp
