Cloon - Cloon (Demo)
Self-financed

file under alternative / pop

Evil Dr. Smith: I don’t care for alternative rock music from Belgium. From dEUS to Zita Swoon and from Admiral Freebee to Das Pop: I don’t understand the buzz and fuzz about it. I think it’s a rather forced way to sound dull. That bloke from dEUS, Tom Barman, seems to be a really nice bloke, but despite some exceptions like ‘Suds & Soda, I hardly have him heard singing songs that really did something for me. Strangely enough I have this feeling towards most of those typical sounding alternative rock bands from Belgium. Only Soulwax is a band I really like (and also their spin-off 2ManyDJs), but that’s maybe because producer Chris Goss (Masters Of reality) once helped them out.

So when I saw that Cloon is a band from Ghent I wasn’t immediately interested. To say the least. But fortunately I was wrong. Dead wrong. This band is good! And not only that: they have quite an original angle to their music as well! The three musicians are all born in the year of punk (1977 of course!) and they have all an intimidating curriculum vitae (music teachers, study conservatorium, jazz connoisseurs, that kind of stuff…). Their lead singer is like the black sheep of the family: he was born in 1976 and hardly finished high school. The four guys do share a mutual interest and that is a great liking for Primus, Tool and Mike Patton. Especially Primus and Patton are omnipresent in Cloon’s sound. They could have mentioned Captain Beefheart as well, because ‘Burn Rubber Blues’ is an evil dissonant, muddy bluesrock stomper in the best Don Van Vliet tradition (and a little Tom Waits as well). More of this! However, the sexy groove in ‘Phantom Days’ is more like Jane’s Addiction during their ‘Ritual de lo Habitual’ album and that’s not bad either!

Still, the band sounds more coherent and distinct than you might expect after all these different kinds of artists. The five songs are stuffed with stubborn rhythms, odd time signatures and nasty hooks: sometimes Cloon sounds like a metalized indierock version of Nomeansno with on vocals the unborn son of Howlin’ Wolf. That rough ‘n’ raw, sandpaper-ish frog-in-throat voice suits the storytelling-like textures of the music perfect. First song ‘Non believer’ is even the most unremarkable song with its conventional song structure and slight predictable choruses. Without this song this demo would have gained 80 points or more. Fans of all the aforementioned bands should really check this band out. Yes, even the bands I mentioned in the second sentence. So then you will finally hear how good Belgians really rock! Tom Barman should give up his unofficial appointment as ambassador of Belgian pop and hand it over to this other Tom .A highly promising debut demo.

Evil Dr. Smith diagnoses: 79/100 (details)

http://www.cloonville.com