What you see before you today is the birth of something special; the play thing for the mystery that is Cloud Boy.
Back in 2006 and sporting what was a ridiculously misjudged mop of hair, a young man wearing a particularly vacant expression caused by a hard night before, was ridiculed for his similarities to a nimbus and christened as Cloud Boy.
He went on with a few friends to found the powerhouse that was Big Safe Radio, which ran on Leeds Student Radio (LSRFm.com) for two years between 2007 and 2009. The show progressed from a one hour, graveyard slot piss up, to a slightly tipsy, two hour prime time show.
Specialising in electronic dance music but encompassing and accepting all genres of the musical spectrum, Big Safe Radio Big was established as a platform on which local producers and artists could display their work and earn some valuable airplay. The format of the show aimed to give the artists feedback on their music, not only from the presenters but from the listeners as well. Big Safe Radio strived not only to showcase new local talent, but wished to act as a live, new music forum, providing artists and fans with insight, knowledge and reviews of the music being produced within the local scene.
Whether the team's aims were achieved was questionable (one week our sole listener was Cloud Boy's mum) but it was the notion of promoting new artists that was important and it is this philosophy that has inspired and been carried into, the creation of this blog.
About The Cloud Toy Blog
SoundCloud is by the fair the greatest form of promotion available to fledgling artists, providing them with a very cheap platform on which to globally express themselves. Like a successful Big Safe Radio, SoundCloud enables users to gain that all important feedback directly from the music fans. We are able to circumvent the influence of the record companies, listening directly to an almost inextinguishable source of new music.
This is where all the hyperbole about revolution comes into play. As music fans, we have never been freer. Before the advent of the internet and SoundCloud, it was the music companies who vetted the demos and picked the releases, directly influencing what it was we listened to. Now however, we too have access to demos. This means that even though we are still reliant upon the record companies for physical releases, they must pay attention to which demo's are liked on SoundCloud when choosing those releases. For if they were ignore an artist's online popularity, they may well loose a potentialy lucrative signing to an independent digital release, that would prosper off the buzz built on the Cloud.
And so to The Cloud Toy Pledge.
It is this freedom that I, Cloud Boy, pledge to celebrate on this Blog. SoundCloud is the vessel towards our musical liberation, the perfect toy for fans of free will and nice sounds. The breathing amongst will now have grasped the origins of the blog's name from the subtly of my language.
Every week or two I will be posting my finest findings from SoundCloud and discussing them here. I will, when I see fit, be mentioning music from other sources and possibly going off on musically unrelated tangents but the main focus will be remain on SoundCloud and the gems to be found therein.
I hope you enjoy the blog and find it interesting and enlightening. Please feel free to get in contact if you don't and especially if you find any recommendations you feel are better than mine; I am always hungry for new music and fresh ideas.
I'd like to end with a quote from the blurb of the aptly named children's book, Cloud Boy by Rhode Montijo, which I feel is particularly relevant to what is going on here.
"High up in the sky lives a little cloud boy, who is feeling very lonely... Then one day he discovers a way to make new friends(.)"
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