We catch up with the Clouds in a Headlock collective to talk about their new album, Breakfast in Phantasia, musical influences, working with MF DOOM, and more. Stream the album below, and read on for the full interview.
For those not yet familiar, tell us about the history of Clouds in a Headlock, and the wider ŌFFKILTR collective?
Èph: Clouds in a Headlock came about roughly three years ago when Lovecraft, Doctor Outer and myself had just finished global tours with other groups. After two plus years of touring projects and not being in the studio all that much, the three of us had a primal urge to vent all the stored up experiences we had been through and put pen to paper. We hadn’t done anything as a trio for quite a while, although we have worked together many times before, and have known each other for a minute. Doctor Outer had deep vaults of beats that he shared with us, and we just got writing. All for the love of the craft and sharing penmanship styles with the other two guys that we respect and value so much. It felt like being back in high school together again and after a couple of weeks and over 50 tracks in the bag (on loop), we knew we had something. We made two mixtapes out of those initial demos and called it Clouds in Headlock – ASMATTIC. Lovecraft pieced together the accompanying video content and we got straight back to writing. We got two other good friends from way back involved on the production side (Rhino + Daylight Robbery = Runway 45) and knew that the group was complete, with everyone firing on all cylinders within their respective ability. ŌFFKILTR is an even wider circle of long time homies and collaborators that all fit under the crew umbrella—more of which will be revealed soon. ŌFFKILTR = eternal circle.
Doctor Outer: ASM and Daylight Robbery are actually childhood friends who went to high school together. ASM has been doing their thing. I was in Charlotte, NC, doing music with my group The Others. We met in Paris working with Wax Tailor on his tour. We knew immediately that we would one day work together without saying. We traveled for like five years on that tour and did stuff with other artists together, BUT it wasn’t what we knew we were capable of doing together. Fast Forward a few years later…I had stopped touring with Wax Tailor and was settling within my studio. I was a bit sick of the music game and people telling you how an album is supposed to be formatted. Everyone was making albums for the business of music and they sounded like it. No one I really knew was making music for just the pure sake of making music. So I took the time to do whatever I wanted to do, with no traditional rules and no intentions for releasing, just for the art and science of creating sound and the biggest part….have fun doing it….like a child with no one advising you what to do. Eventually it got lonely, so I couldn’t think of anyone better to merge and return to this re-found freedom of creating nor anyone that would get it and embrace it, or had the ability to just be dope, except Lovecraft and Éph. That’s when we formed Clouds in a Headlock, for the love of it. We took a bunch of beats (shout out to Madwreck & DAC) I had stashed and recorded two mixtapes worth of music for fun called ASMATTIC Vol 1 & 2. To change up our known identities we went into our imagination and reinvented ourselves. It felt like teenagers after high school hanging out but from our remote locations. It was a given to add Rhino in after because of his unlimited ways of making different styles of production and Daylight came shortly after with his sharp ear of picking samples and structuring them into beats to form Runway 45 along with The Ghost In The Machine who provides the skits, additional samples with delays and effects.
There is also Pitch92, a producer from London who is in the ŌFFKILTR crew. He will be introduced in another project titled, Endgame. We needed our own sound and the guys on the production side knew how to compliment what and how we write basically without trying. I think it all works because we aren’t trying to impress people or blow up the spot and take over. We are brothers living in different countries which are not the same places we grew up, who just resonate together in life beyond music. We’re just having fun making what we want to hear. Everyone played a role in getting here.
And what’s behind the name Clouds in a Headlock? What does it mean?
GT Lovecraft: We wanted the name to conjure an image that represents us and our approach to crafting sound. The cloud is the ethereal ever changing. The headlock is the visceral undeniable. We felt like that was a dope piece of imagery that works on multiple levels.
Doctor Outer: Clouds were used back in the days (especially with old cartoons) as a form of thought coming from a thinking head where they were locked up. What you are listening to is production and rhymes, and what you are viewing are visuals that all came from artistic thoughts (clouds) that we have in our head being unlocked in sound. We just passing through what we do.
The press release for your new album, Breakfast in Phantasia, describes your sound as being like “early Souls of Mischief and Company Flow”, and I’d also probably add The Pharcyde to the list. Would you say that’s accurate, and that you take influence from groups like that?
GT Lovecraft: For sure, we definitely grew up as kids listening to free-spirited, nerdy playful rhyme flipping stuff like Souls of Mischief and The Pharcyde, and of course all the East-coast Natives Tongues and affiliated stuff. When the backpack vs jiggy era came in, we listened to a lot of DOOM, Def Jux, Rhymesayers etc, when we were on some graffiti writer crate digger young knucklehead purist kind of tip. From a craftsmanship perspective, those artists definitely flew the flag for credible lyricism, but often I felt like some of the energy and vibe of earlier hip-hop was getting lost. A lot of the stuff felt like it was experimental for the sake of it, rather than from a genuinely aesthetic place. In the last years we’ve honestly listened to mostly jazz, psychedelic stuff, rare soul etc. When it came to working on the Clouds stuff everything we came up on I guess filtered in through the subconscious, but it’s really just about what we consider good music, and respecting the integrity of the craft but exploring freely.
Tell us about Breakfast in Phantasia, and what we can expect.
Doctor Outer: This album was created during the pandemic, so we were locked away remotely in our homes where our studios became like an escape room from the world. An imagination station. Phantasia is a place where you can go left, have fun and do what you dream. An escape from the herd and the normal everyday action that everyone is caught in. It’s a sound universe where you can be…. you. Make what you want to hear and be different.
Not unlike some of the classic groups we mentioned earlier, what I like about the album is that it’s serious but also a lot of fun, which hip-hop often isn’t. Is that something you guys intentionally make as part of your music?
Daylight Robbery: Definitely. So much of the new rap we’re listening to, and enjoy, is missing this element. It’s become even more rare than it used to be. The Pharcyde is a great example of a group that took humor and fun to the extreme. Some of those tracks/skits like “Quentin’s on the Way” gave you a real sense of what it would be like to just hang out with those guys. The only modern example I can think of is Action Bronson who seems to have a strong sense of fun across much of how he presents himself. A huge part of who we are, just as a bunch of close friends, is so heavily centered around comedy and jokes that if we didn’t incorporate this into the work in some way it would feel inauthentic and not representative of who we are as people. What I like about our approach is that some of the comedy is in your face and some less obvious, it catches you off guard and makes you question if we’re serious or not, walking that line in itself makes me laugh.
Èph: It comes naturally. We’ve always made music for fun above all. Ego and competition are undoubtedly huge parts of hip-hop, and there are elements of that in everything that we do too, but they are not the catalyst, nor the cornerstone as is so often the case—especially nowadays. Making music together is an extension of us just hanging out, as well as our collective passion and respective skill sets. So it always starts with fun and enthusiastic discussions which seamlessly transition into creating sonic tapestries that reflect our communal mind. It just naturally occurs because of who we are and how the group’s dynamic works.
Doctor Outer: ASM are masters at this. Create whatever comes to mind with no fear or trying to be relatable. We study and share a lot of stuff individually from film, lectures, music, food, people, books, and life. We rhyme about what we do in everyday life and put it together like a puzzle in an abstract dimension. It’s fun. No pressure. Nerdy unexpected bars and patterns over psychedelic, abstract, to jazzy organic production. We range out to the unknown to re-find or discover what we love.
The group has its roots in ASM, who have had critical acclaim over the years. I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask what it was like working with MF DOOM on the track “Masking”?
Firstly, Rest in Peace to the Villain. That DOOM feature was a wild one, and something that meant a lot to us at the time and has taken on another layer of meaning since his passing. We have been flying the DOOM flag for years, and to this day his pen remains in a league of its own. The project we were working on at the time was entitled, The Jade Amulet, which was a full concept album set in a fictional realm where all featured artists played characters in the story. We wrote the whole story before we started composing the music or writing any rhymes, and the narrative was anchored in the monomyth idea. We straight up wrote the part of the antagonist tyrant king for DOOM. At the time he was notoriously elusive, but we happened to meet him at a show where we were both on the lineup in Marseille, France and connected like that. He was in the spot all day, did his sound check and we drank beers together. Good old regular dude, definitely had jokes and a mischievous streak. I remember he deliberately left the venue like 15 minutes before his show time to basically be late for the show on purpose which bugged me out. But he killed it. When it came to hitting him up for the feature, he was down. I guess he just gravitated to the idea of playing a character and writing his parts to fulfil a very specific brief in terms of narrative function and what pieces of information needed to be conveyed by his character to move the story along. One day his people hit us up like “He checked himself into a hotel room in London with a bottle of Cognac. Can you send the instrumental again?” The way he executed the brief was nothing short of masterful. That record is very close to our hearts. The last line gives me chills when I hear it now “And he was gone, through a false panel in the room, disappeared across the lagoon”
Once the dust settles on Breakfast in Phantasia, what’s next up from Clouds in a Headlock and ŌFFKILTR?
Doctor Outer: Just making music and living life. The music will take us where the unknown awaits. We got a lot of stuff that’s set to be released under the ŌFFKILTR umbrella – Odd Holiday which is Doctor Outer and Daylight Robbery! combining, Endgame which is GT Lovecraft, Doctor Outer, and Pitch 92 on beats, and the follow up Clouds In A Headlock album. All three of those should drop in 2023. We also got a Runway 45 instrumental project in the pipeline, new ASM, and more to be created. We and you will see.
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Breakfast In Phantasia is out now, available at Bandcamp and on vinyl from Fat Beats. Follow Clouds in a Headlock on Instagram, Spotify and Apple Music. Interview by Grown Up Rap.