After two great self-released albums, Vancouver collective Crack Cloud have signed to Jagjaguwar and will release their third album, Red Mile, via the label on July 26. As usual, the group produced it themselves, recording the Mojave desert, which is also where they shot the “skydiving punk” video for first single “Blue Kite” which was also used for the album’s cover. Here’s a bit of the band’s Zach Choy on the album:
Blue Kite was written with a cultural intersection in mind. In Canada in the early 00’s we grew up to Sum 41. Late night YTV. And the spectre of Woodstock 99. From the outside looking in: being in a punk band meant that you could be a jackass. Pick your nose on stage; play the drum like Energizer Bunny. My relationship to punk music as a teenager hinged on self-deprecation; an easy, destructive mode of confronting what I didn’t like about myself. And what I didn’t understand about the world around me.
There’s a film that came out of China in 1993 and was subsequently banned therein, called The Blue Kite. It’s told from the perspective of a boy growing up in 1950’s Beijing. His environment is one of social conformity and political correctness, and he relishes in escapism when flying his kite. Eventually the boy succumbs to the social climate, and the kite itself is swept away into the branches of a tree. I thought the imagery was striking and wanted to incorporate it into a video with Aidan’s skydiving punk, in a hypnagogic way.
You can read Choy’s full statement below.
“Blue Kite” is part phlegmatic proto-punk, part synthy new wave, but then there’s the string section, which all makes it very Crack Cloud. Watch the video below.
Crack Cloud will be on tour this fall, and while most dates are in Europe, they will play three US shows in November: Chicago’s Empty Bottle on 11/18, NYC’s Bowery Ballroom on 11/20, and LA’s Lodge Room on 11/22. Tickets for those shows go on sale Friday, May 17 at 10 AM local time.
Red Mile:
1. Crack Of Life
2. The Medium
3. Blue Kite
4. Lack Of Lack
5. Epitaph
6. I Am (I Was)
7. Ballad Of Billy
8. Lost On The Red Mile
Crack Cloud Tour Dates
Thu. Aug. 22 – Malaga, ESP @ Canela Party
Wed. Sep. 4 – Zürich, CH @ Bogen F
Thu. Sep. 5 – Brussels, BEL – Museum @ Botanique
Fri. Sep. 6 – Asten-Heusden, NL @ Misty Fields
Sat. Sep. 7 – Paris, FR @ Maroquinerie
Mon. Sep. 9 – Berlin, GER @ Lido
Tue. Sep. 10 – Copenhagen, DK @ Hotel Cecil
Wed. Sep. 11 – Malmö, SWE @ Plan B
Thu. Sep. 12 – Stockholm, SWE @ Hus 7
Fri. Sep. 13 – Oslo, NOR – By:Larm Festival @ Blå
Sat. Sep. 14 – Oslo, NOR – By:Larm Festival @ TBC
Mon. Sep. 16 – Cologne, GER @ Bumann & Sohn
Tue. Sep. 16 – Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso Noord
Wed. Sep. 18 – Rouen, FR @ Le 106
Thu. Sep. 19 – La Rochelle, FR @ Sirene
Fri. Sep. 20 – Nantes, FR @ Lieu Unique
Wed. Sep. 25 – London, UK @ Koko
Thu. Sep. 26 – Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club
Fri. Sep. 27 – Glasgow, UK @ Stereo
Sun. Sep. 29 – Dublin, IRE @ Whelans
Mon. Sep. 30 – Manchester, UK @ Gorilla
Tue. Oct. 1 – Bristol, UK @ Lost Horizon
Wed. Oct. 2 – Brighton, UK @ CHALK
Mon. Nov. 18 – Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle
Wed. Nov. 20 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom
Fri. Nov. 22 – Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room
Crack Cloud’s Zach Choy on Red Mile:
When we were recording the album Red Mile in the Mojave Desert, I spent nights reading about 20th century China. My grandparents migrated to Canada during Mao’s Great Leap Forward, and besides the photo albums and childhood memories, I have little basis for understanding their experience.
Beginning in the late 80s there came to be a generation of Chinese filmmakers whose main subject was the depiction of life during the Cultural Revolution. The films from this time examine the growing pains of national identity, without the glorification that defined National cinema up until then.
As the viewer with a degree of generational and cultural separation, I found an unusual sense of reprieve in the nuance of it all. And as our time drifted by in the desert, I continued to look inward.The music of Red Mile came naturally, and of its own volition.
The Mojave had an elemental effect.
The seemingly never-ending labyrinth of touring into exhaustion that characterized preceding years.
And the externalization of Crack Cloud’s mythology, displaced and dismantled as we’ve grown out of ourselves, constantly, creatively reborn, by virtue and design.
This is how I would describe Red Mile, and more generally, the group’s freefall, nearly a decade in the making.So when close friend and collaborator Aidan Pontarini pitched the skydiving punk concept for the album cover, it resonated deeply.
Blue Kite was written with a cultural intersection in mind. In Canada in the early 00’s we grew up to Sum 41. Late night YTV. And the spectre of Woodstock 99. From the outside looking in: being in a punk band meant that you could be a jackass. Pick your nose on stage; play the drum like Energizer Bunny. My relationship to punk music as a teenager hinged on self-deprecation; an easy, destructive mode of confronting what I didn’t like about myself. And what I didn’t understand about the world around me.
There’s a film that came out of China in 1993 and was subsequently banned therein, called The Blue Kite. It’s told from the perspective of a boy growing up in 1950’s Beijing. His environment is one of social conformity and political correctness, and he relishes in escapism when flying his kite. Eventually the boy succumbs to the social climate, and the kite itself is swept away into the branches of a tree. I thought the imagery was striking and wanted to incorporate it into a video with Aidan’s skydiving punk, in a hypnagogic way.
We filmed the video in and around the Desert where the album was recorded, and the skydiving took place.