Pioneered by Colorado park junkie, Wellington Downs, cloudboarding is the new shred-headphone craze of the inverse universe.
Wellington aka Matthew Sage (Patient Sounds CEO, Kick Majestic, formerly M. Pyres) offered up some words on his new project and how it somehow pulls from Princess Diana, Faul McCartney, and empty pool sessions:
I had just moved into a new house after living in a house with a really terrible recording situation. So…this new house had an amazing space for recording (Briar Plateaux). Erik (the other half of Kick Majestic) is one of the most chronically busy dudes, so we were (are) recording when we can, but I was unemployed for a bit, and was spending most of my time at home, flipping the house (painting, cleaning, etc). But I had all this space, and hadn’t multi-tracked stuff in a while, so I started working on these songs in the basement. I was listening to a few really key bands* that all had a kind of shared haze. Watery, ghostly guitar tones. Blown out, but super compressed drums. Lots of roomsound.
All of this was happening while I was relapsing on skateboarding**. I had been skating some, mainly just mellow parking lot stuff, but in the last 5 months or so, my energy for skateboarding really piqued. My roommate (the dude skating in the video, Alex Runge, who is an amazing painter) and I have been skating parks mainly. Most of the parks in Colorado (especially Fort Collins) are these huge concrete bowl type parks. I’ve been getting really into carving in the pool, flying through transition. That woosh of blood into my head. The way the earth spins for a minute. It felt like how all these bands were sounding to me. I really wanted to make that music.
So I started recording whenever I had a chance: I would write parts on the guitar, write a drum part, record the drums, record the guitar and then build it up. It was the same way I first started multi-tracking on the same machine I was working with again heavily for the first time in like 2 years. I had all these instrumental songs that I listened to driving around, or whatever, and I wrote melodies over the course of a month or so.
So, after I had like 6 or so songs completed, I kinda took a break for a week, and then my mom called and told me my sister had been up since 3am crying over the royal wedding alone to her television***. Tammi (my sister) kind of idolized Princess Diana, and I remember her calling and freaking out when she died. I was 9. It really stuck with me, her being so affected by something that felt so imaginary, so remote. On the news that day someone said “The Late Diana” and it just struck me. Like she was late for the wedding. Stuck in the tunnel.
The name, Wellington Downs, has a kind of similar, ghostly story. Wellington is a town just north of Fort Collins. I’ve only been maybe twice, and don’t really know much about it, but I do know, as a kid, there was (and maybe still is) a sign that says, “Welcome to Wellington: Home of the Wellington Downs.” We were driving to Nebraska to visit family and I asked my mom, as we passed the sign, “what are the Wellington Downs?” She explained that it was a horse-racing track that was to be built in Wellington, but then the project failed, and all that was left was the sign***. It stuck with me the same way as Late Diana did. It is this year’s long legacy of an imaginary landmark that never existed, but has a sign to denote it.
I felt like that was the perfect name for my imaginary “studioband” I had accidentally started.
Basically, Wellington Downs is just a manifestation of my childhood imagination via music*, skateboarding** and ghosts/legends***.
*music:
The Beatles (and all conspiracies about Paul’s death in 1966)
Thee Oh Sees (specifically “thee hounds of a foggy notion” LP/DVD)
Lower Dens – Twin Hand Movement
Pure X (especially live at the UPS house show at SXSW 2011 [holy shit])
Pisces – A Lovely Sight (as recommended by Timothy Perry [ex-Weed Diamond])
Creedence Clearwater Revival (especially “Hot Stuff” on cassette tape from a gas station in Nebraska)
Townes Van Zandt**skateboarding:
Tom Penny
Mark Gonzales
Ed Templeton and every Toy Machine video
Antihero Skateboards video “Tent City”
my local skateshop (the skateboard market)
mini-ramps
Epicly Later’d
“Fruit of the Vine” pool shredding video
BAKER2G video
Menikmati video***ghosts/legends:
The Late Diana, Princess of Wales
Paul/Faul McCartney
Billy Shears
Tom Penny/Mark Gonzales
Townes Van Zandt
Tascam dp-01fx multi-track digital recorder
my parents’ basement from 2003-2006 (healthy horse/vice versa)
Wellington Downs
Briar Plateaux
Two apple EPs sit at bandcamp.