My love for Ben Sharp's Cloudkicker is well documented on Metal Injection over the years, so it should come as no surprise that I was extremely happy to wake up to a new album this morning. Once again in true Cloudkicker fashion, Sharp quietly released Woum on his Bandcamp page with the name your price option.
The album itself is much more reminiscent of Sharp's warm and fuzzy lighter work, and considering Let Yourself Be Huge turned out to be one of my favorites in his discography over the years, I'm pretty much on board with anything he puts out! After several listens I could already tell this is a beautiful masterpiece to drive to, but try it out for yourself.
Unfortunately, this great news also comes with a bit of sad news. On the Cloudkicker Facebook page he goes into explaining that this marks the end of physical copies for Cloudkicker releases.
This will no doubt be a bummer for some but Woum and conceivably any future releases will go back to being digital only like everything was pre-Beacons. Sorry, I know how much people dig the physical releases. But I feel like I have a pretty good reason: Making vinyl is a tremendous pain in the ass. For lots of reasons, not the least of which is the 3-4 month lead time on production that always feels like an incredible drag on momentum.
I will for sure be losing out on money by doing this, and oh well. The time I'll have back by not dealing with the production and distribution of these things will more than make up for it to me. I've been feeling a little squeezed by the entire merch process recently, and by simplifying things in this way I'll have more time to actually make music, which I'm excited about. Life has gotten busier in the past year and it doesn't look like it will slow down any time soon, so this is a way for me to keep things balanced.
Definitely a bummer, but I'm just happy we continue to get new music at all!
