Cloudkicker: "Beacons"

A true beacon of light in the music world, this album is basically everything anyone could ask for in an instrumental.

Less physics, more amazing metal!

I’ve been wanting to do one of these albums for a while now, since this artist has become one of my favorites over the course of a few months. You may also know “Cloudkicker” by the name B.M. Sharp (or just Ben Sharp). Ring any bells? If not, I’ll explain: this man has a ton of acoustic guitar stuff on YouTube that is downright genius. Seriously, go look it up—he’s one of the better guitar players I’ve ever heard. So how does that sort of brilliance translate into another genre? Very well. Very well indeed.

For those of you that don’t know, which may be the majority of you, Cloudkicker is a project by Ben Sharp that simply involves instrumental metal music. There are two exceptions, the albums “Loop” and “Let Yourself Be Huge”; they are more acoustic and lighter in nature, with the latter being an album of serene greatness. But the other albums in Cloudkicker’s repertoire are metal instrumentals that equal and surpass his acoustic songs. Before I move on into reviewing this album, however, I’d like to mention something that is important to realize about this specific artist—and also this specific CD.

You see, the idea behind an instrumental is for the listener to provide their own ideas as to what the song is representing. What story is being told, if you will. Songs with lyrics force us to follow what the singer is saying; we can’t help but be influenced by the words being spoken. The brilliance behind an instrumental album is that it allows our ears and minds to form original pictures and ideas simply from musical stimulation, causing the scope of what the songs mean to reach levels of infinity. We are allowed to create the world that the album lives in. I realize that this sounds like an odd notion, but before you raise your eyebrow too far just give it a try.

 Here is what I advise: start playing the album, making sure your player is not on shuffle or anything of those sorts. Listen to the album all the way through, taking in every layer of music that is presented. Hear the high notes, feel the bass, and sense everything in between. Now, look around you. Look out a window at the picturesque panorama if possible; or look at the objects around you, creating ties between the audio and the visual. Look at the album art and the name of the songs. What story is being told? Who is that, and what is he reading? Why is there extensive complex machinery behind him? Close your eyes; hear what is being played. What do you see or feel? Allow your mind to make a story that fits the music. Let your imagination paint the pictures with the colors provided by the musical stimuli. Just think about, with, and beyond the music.

I can see forever...

The reason I have spent the last paragraph being weird is because of two things. The first is that I love instrumental albums, as well as albums that give a lot of instrumental time (i.e. Between The Buried And Me’s newer albums). They allow and force you to think about what you are listening to—there is no guide in their sonic landscapes. It is the enjoyment of music in its purest form. The second reason is that Cloudkicker must be approached in this method, or else everything will sound very redundant. If you walk into this album with a normal approach, it will not be nearly as enjoyable as it could be.

So let’s get started: how does this album sound from an engineering standpoint? Comparative to previous albums, Ben Sharp has definitely honed his mixing skills since his last (popular) Cloudkicker opus, “The Discovery”. One of my main complaints in my early listening experiences with that album was that it was not very well balanced. There are plenty of places where I wish I could hear some of the more intricate layers in the songs because the overwhelming distorted guitar shoved them soundly to the side. This has been fixed in “Beacons”: everything comes through very clearly and intentionally. I enjoy the crispness of the sound that is heard, even though the distortion of choice is fuzzier than most. This may have something to the cleverly selected kick drum beats that highlight many of the strums on the guitar; this gives the guitar a sharper sound without having to reduce the fuzzy distortion. Speaking of drums, I will have you know that the drums are all programmed in this album. And yet they still sound great! It is not a drum machine; instead it is the use of a ProTools plug-in that turns MIDI into amazing drum tracks. This is a one-man project, after all, so why not use such a thing to ease the recording process?

As for actual songs, I personally think each song has its own slice of genius grafted right in. Even the most mundane-sounding track has purpose in the whole scheme of the album. There is an obvious reason as to why each one was placed into the slot where it was placed. Intentionality screams forth from this album, and I would advise other artists to have the same purposefulness in their song writing and selection for albums. The list of songs creates a home with many rooms for each song to have its own individuality and yet still be found under the same roof.

The genius behind the genius in the genius.

You may be wondering why I have not complained about repetitiveness in this album yet. It is repetitive, and I am fully aware of that. But, you must take into consideration a few things. First of all, the repetitive nature is limited to the bounds of the song itself. There is a MASSIVE difference between a repetitive song and a repetitive album, the former being okay and the latter being not so good. The difference is that a song is one idea; if it repeats itself a few times or decides to extend a riff out longer than you might expect, it’s okay because it’s still the same idea. However, if an album is the same idea over and over again, then it becomes boring. With “Beacons”, the songs may be repetitive, but they are their own idea contain in separate packaging. Plus, if you were to listen very closely and attentively, you might notice that most of the time there is a new layer of sound being added with every repetition. What I’m trying to say is that yes, the album can sound repetitive. But at its core, it really isn’t, and that can be heard with multiple careful listens.

There is something about this album that makes it even more unsettlingly interesting. Have you looked at the titles of the tracks yet? If you have, you might have noticed that they are strange, to say the least, for normal song names. That is because every song name is a phrase that was recorded from a pilot whose plane was going down, meaning that he was facing an inevitable doom in a fiery wreckage of twisted metal and smoke. Let that sink in for a moment. The titles of the tracks are someone’s last words. That always gave me the chills.

As you may have noticed, I am partially in love with this album and failed at hiding it. But what is the point in hiding it? It’s amazing. This is the kind of diamond in the rough that music seekers like me love finding or hearing about from friends. This is proof that the Top 100 lists are a load of crap, that the terrible popular music out there falsely shadows music that is actually good, that true artists aren’t always the ones making millions of dollars and the media headlines on a daily basis. This is beautiful music that paints an even more gorgeous picture with your own imagination. This is penultimate perfection. Cloudkicker’s “Beacons” flies above and beyond expectations, cleanly earning itself a well-deserved:

7 out of 7. What else can be said? Bravo, Ben Sharp. Bravo.