Marc Behrens’ “Clould” is an album that seems to hover somewhere between the clouds and the imagination — a liminal space where the ancient myths of the sky meet the cold reality of modern air travel. The title itself is a clever fusion of “cloud” and “could”, hinting at both the ethereal and the potential, a collision of the mystical past and the mechanized present. The album is an electroacoustic exploration that draws from the mundane yet bizarre experience of air travel, transforming the sounds of airports and airplanes into something akin to a sonic hallucination.
Behrens’ “Clould” is a meticulously crafted cycle of five movements, complemented by a prelude, “Aiear”, released earlier this year. Together, these works form a sprawling 95-minute sonic journey, one that is as much a meditation on the disembodied experience of air travel as it is a reflection on the myths that once populated the skies. The album is composed from a vast array of recordings — sounds captured from within airplanes and airports using everything from standard microphones to electromagnetic sensors, even sounds sourced from check-in luggage and in-flight entertainment systems. Behrens’ sound palette is as varied as it is innovative, capturing the eerie, liminal atmosphere of air travel in a way that feels both alien and familiar.
The process behind “Clould” is as fascinating as the end result. Behrens manipulates these recordings to the point of abstraction, particularly the voices—those ever-present, yet strangely impersonal in-flight announcements. Through a method he calls “pilgrim’s stride mode”, these voices are repeatedly stretched, compressed, and reassembled until they become something altogether different: machinic chimeras, disembodied and haunting. The ultimate goal seems to be the creation of a new language, one built from the fragmented syllables of airline safety demonstrations and announcements, and recombined into unintelligible but eerily resonant phrases. It’s as if the album is speaking in tongues — an enigmatic, non-human language that might be deciphered, but only if you listen closely enough.
The five movements of “Clould” each bring a unique perspective to this thematic exploration. The first movement, with its choir recorded back in 1990, juxtaposes the sacred with the mechanical, setting the tone for the entire album. This track, along with the third and fourth movements, premiered in Lisbon back in 2011, where it must have left listeners both intrigued and unsettled. The second movement, which made its debut in 2013, is a more concise, but no less impactful, piece that serves as a sonic bridge between the album’s more expansive sections.
But it’s the final movement that truly cements “Clould” as a monumental work. Clocking in at nearly 37 minutes, this movement is a sprawling, immersive experience that feels like the culmination of everything that came before. Here, Behrens goes all-in on his concept, crafting a soundscape that’s dense with meaning, yet elusive in its interpretation. The voices, now fully transformed into something otherworldly, echo through the piece like the remnants of a forgotten language, a bjamantra for the modern world. The track premiered at an outdoor collective listening event in Germany in 2023, a fitting venue for a work that is as much about space — both physical and metaphorical — as it is about sound.
The album’s use of language, both real and imagined, invites listeners to extract their own meanings from its sonic fragments, much like one might from an oracle. There’s a mystical quality to “Clould”, one that’s rooted in the ancient while being unmistakably modern. It’s an album that exists in the space between, where the mundane becomes magical, and the familiar turns strange. In “Clould”, Marc Behrens has created a work that is both deeply intellectual and profoundly emotional. It’s an album that challenges the listener to reconsider the very nature of sound, language, and meaning. Like the mythological beings that once populated the clouds, “Clould” is elusive, mysterious, and ultimately unforgettable. Vito Camarretta
via Chain DLK