Words by Justin Turford
We’ve had the pleasure of listening to plenty of great music recorded during lockdown and the eponymously titled album by Champyun Clouds is no exception. Two Nottingham based musicians from two different generations creating in isolation have made an album of woozy space-pop that in a fair universe would be a smash on the Saturn hit parade! This is ‘indie’ music without the scene connotations, opaque yet personal, funky and grimy AND loaded with old school songcraft. As the album blurb says ‘(it) is somewhat akin to William Onyeabor covering Serge Gainsbourg, Baxter Dury produced by Beck, or a very weird Eels/Flaming Lips collab’. Let’s find out…
Champyun Clouds comprises of Neil Tolliday (or Nail as most folk know him as) and Asa Hudson. Nail is the famous one, a de facto deep house legend as a producer and owner of 89:GHOST and one half of chart-storming and chilled beats magicians Bent (amongst many other excellent musical projects he has been involved in over the last 30 years). Asa is the younger artist and has all the attributes to become an underground icon of his own harbouring a fiercely independent streak, a gentle humility and a broad musical palette that comes across in his own solo works. I’m happy to call both of them friends so in keeping with how the record was made, I pinged them a few questions separately about how the record came about….
Artwork by Asa
Due to Asa’s lack of column inches I asked him about his musical journey (you can google Nail, he’s all over it!).
ASA - I’ve been recording music for about 10-ish years. I always had a keen interest in music from an early age, but never started considering music as a future until I was about 9 when my uncle gave me my first guitar and am forever grateful to him for doing so. Shortly after I taught myself to play bass, drums and faffing about with synthesisers but didn’t record anything until I was about 15. I used to rob my mum’s Dictaphone and record weird sounds and loops on there and it completely blew me away hearing myself in that way, even though the sound was terrible it was enough to kickstart my interest in wanting to take recording seriously.
My uncle again came to the rescue and lent me his 8 track zip disk recorder for a week when I was 15, and when he came back to get it off me, I had recorded around 20+ tracks, and was at that point he turned round to my dad and said “I don’t have the heart to take it off him”, so he then bought another so I could have that one. My uncle Mark was and still is the main reason I have got this far within music and without his continued support I honestly don’t know where I would be now.
I recorded hundreds of tracks over the years on this 8 track and it helped me understand and comprehend just how special and how much of a privilege it is to record music and explore sonic endeavours of the most basic or stripped back of forms. The limitations of recording this way shifted me into thinking more outside the box of how to capture what I’m hearing in my head. I now use a laptop to arrange most of my compositions but to me, at the end of the day, it's not what you use, it's how you use it.
In the early days of recording, it sounded more like weird soundscapes and to me like music for films that didn’t exist. In the later years one of these pieces got used for the Sleaford Mods first film “Invisible Britain”, which gave me a great confidence boost and knew I was onto something early on.
Aside from recording, I absolutely adore the art of DJing and how you can soundtrack punters entire night in the most beautiful and meaningful way that they hopefully remember for years to come, which then started to influence how I would play my music live and also the environments in which you build upon your sound can either make or break what you are trying to accomplish.
Over the years in-between my solo releases, I have had numerous side projects and collaborations with a number of great musicians and writers. Projects such as Manuff, Nut Gone, SOAP and Skinny Pigs have all been crucial in helping test the waters of where music can go and how it can be presented.
And now I’m a part of Champyun Clouds with Nail, I feel I know my purpose on this planet and also within the music industry.
I asked the lads how they met and how the record came about. As is typical in life, memories differ slightly…
ASA - My early recollections of meeting Nail are slightly hazy. When I used to volunteer at The Music Exchange around the time that they were still in the West End Arcade I remember seeing him about when he worked there, but we worked different shifts so never really crossed paths that often. I knew about his music with his 89:Ghost label first and loved it, which was weirdly way before I got into Bent or even realised he was in them.
The first time I remember actually talking to Nail was when he first started working at Rough Trade and he was playing “We’re Only In It For The Money” by Frank Zappa and it was one I'd never heard before so started talking to him about it. Not sure if Nail remembers it like that, but I seem to.
NAIL - He was mithering me for years to do something, so I eventually relented and lobbed him a load of demos, hoping it would keep him quiet for a few weeks.. two hours later he’s like “here’s the first song, just putting vocals on the second, let me know what you think mate”.. and now we’re about 40 tracks deep and counting! For once something backfiring actually worked out to be a good thing.
We’ve not actually recorded anything in the same room at the same time up til this point. I get the music together, send it to him, he puts his vocals and guitar on it and sends it back, then I mix it together and that’s it. I over-think almost everything in my life to the point of nothing ever happening, but with this I just let it be.. I’ve no idea what he’s on about most of the time, but if that’s the lyrics he wrote, so be it. Same with the music, I leave in mistakes and things that shouldn’t work.
ASA - Nail asked me in late January/ early February 2021 if I wanted to work on some unused instrumentals, he had lying around for about 2 years and I was really chuffed and surprised he had asked me. The first track I worked on was “Hot Delivery” (their first single and free to download), and within about 3 weeks we had easily finished around 25+ tracks.
The way we work is that Nail will email me the instrumentals, I will then add my vocals, guitar or whatever he suggests and then send him back my files for him to mix in, chop and arrange. This method was primarily down to COVID restrictions, but its a method that works at the minute and we still have yet to record anything in a room together. Communication and respectfully understanding each other's visions was really easy and that made the process so much more enjoyable.
Both of the chaps are serious music-heads with deep interests in the outer reaches of the sonic world and as such the music on this record is quite tricky to define. I asked them if there were any artists or records that had informed the palette of the music or was it just an ‘anything goes’ attitude?
NAIL - Well a lot of the music was written a couple of years ago, when I was getting demos together for the next Bent album, but they didn’t fit, so (they) were lying around doing nothing.. there's an “anything goes” attitude to whenever I make music, so yeah I guess you could say that was the case with this too! It has continued in this way as we keep making new stuff, it’s how I prefer to work, but makes it difficult to describe what it’s supposed to be, cos I’ve got no idea either! I guess you’d call it psych-pop-trip-rock-electro-beats.. I dunno.
ASA - It was more an “anything goes” attitude, which is great because we both get surprised by the end result of most things we make. I can honestly say the only thing that was influencing me was whatever tune Nail had sent me on the day. I listen to music all the time, but there wasn’t any other artists or records that helped influence or shape the record. Nail would send me a tune and that was enough inspiration in itself.
We both are inspired by the records we grew up with over the years and that probably shows in certain areas, but there really did feel like a sense of “new” doing this and Nail's production and arrangements are beyond words and he is one of the greatest of our time. I have learnt a great deal from him and continue to do so.
Finally I asked Nail if there were plans to do more with Asa…
NAIL - I plan to march him into town and force him to buy a new pair a trousers asap.
** At time of writing our prolific heroes had released another E.P. so get a move on if you want the 7”!) https://champyunclouds.bandcamp.com/album/champyun-clouds-ep **