A CloakWork Orange - The Cloaks
With The Cloaks’ highly anticipated remix album, A Cloak ReWork Orange, dropping December 1st, the following is an update to my 2022 review of their release, A CloakWork Orange.
Well into A CloakWork Orange I realized I should have checked any preconceived notions at track one. Thematically varied and dense, sonically, intellectually, and emotionally diverse, with compelling scratches by Sir Beans, DJ D-Styles, and Roach the DJ, this album marked the return to my hip hop roots via the underground.
It’s not an LP I’d throw on while doing chores; it demands significant attention, and it demands energy—just look at the cover art. The album urged me to suspend my preconceptions of the world, of life, and the genre of hip hop itself.
'The Cloaks' has a post-punk ring to it, and honestly—two Gen-X guys from L.A., and the title referencing the book that spawned the film some credit for starting the punk movement—I was listening for a punk influence. Maybe the only overt reference is the “stage dive into the crowd” in Solid Buck. But the artists embody a hard edge and temper it with intellect.
…it’s not an LP I’d throw on while doing chores; it demands significant attention, and it demands energy.
Seeing Gel Roc flash the Jim Marrs book ‘Rule by Secrecy’ in the 52 Card Pick Up video helped me begin to consolidate the themes. I could have gone down a vast rabbit hole with the reference to secret societies, as on my nightstand as I wrote this was a historical novel about Austrian Maria Carolina of the Habsburg dynasty, who, as Queen of Naples ruling from Caserta Royal Palace, had just guided the revocation of a ban on Freemasonry. In fact, the Habsburgs, I learned, had about five percent of all Europe’s Freemason lodges in Vienna alone by the end of the 1780s, coinciding with her rule. What does close listening do if not help me relate an album or song’s themes to my own life and interests. This video was also evidence of the limitless potential for intellectual engagement in underground hip hop.
52 Card Pick Up from A CloakWork Orange by The Cloaks, 2022 Abolano Records
Parallel worlds might be most explicitly referenced in ‘52 Card Pickup’, ‘Nameless Ghosts’, and ‘Covenant of the Cloaks’…
It’s so clear, life is a mirror; Reflect on that, reconcile your fears; Reality check, control your sphere; Everything’s-not-as-it-appears.
Counterbalancing its intellect, Cloakwork is thematically and vocally grounded at times by stark innocence, humility, and sentimentality. Case in point, AWOL One in ‘Fiend Mode’ in his round-the-way timbre owns that he’s “a student not a teacher, a sinner not a preacher”. And in All Wear Cloaks Gel Roc says, “I’m a father, not a saint or a role model, but I seek to understand and to be a better man; I’m not afraid of being wrong so I put it in a song so we can all sing along”. The track is laced with unifying messages setting it apart from the ego-driven mainstream.
Seeing Gel Roc flash the Jim Marrs book ‘Rule by Secrecy’ in the 52 Card Pick Up video helped me begin to consolidate the themes.
Gift of Strife offers up a shrewd and vivid analogy for the constant longing and waiting for the future that trips up so many, including myself. The emcee describes the perfect beauty, off in the distance, and showcases elements that drive an artist and the hope that change—both deliberate and inevitable—brings, as the veils of illusion are lifted.
Another turning point during my first listen-through was Friday Night Flavors, which took me a little by surprise after the preceding tracks. I concluded that drinking songs just come with the territory. But it provided a carefree, throwback element to the album which, once I got into it, seemed indispensable in relation to the wild ride in and out of gritty realism, intellectualism, and dystopia. “Rest in peace to the rest of the week” and “Tonight is the night of my life” are just great lines about staying present!
Counterbalancing all its intellect, Cloakwork is thematically and vocally grounded at times by stark innocence, humility, and sentimentality.
In the context of the Flavors line “don’t set your beer down”, I couldn’t help but relate it to AWOL One’s somber statement in another track about friends in his phone who are no longer alive, figurative though the reference may have been. But despite opportunities for reflection, the LP doesn’t advocate dwelling—It moves you along.
In fact, Friday Night Flavors, Speakers Up and the funky DNB Not Your Average lend some danceability. Do your chores to those.
The lyricists call for a rebalance in Solid Buck, “Turn up the bass and lay low on the treble”. But even as Awkward pushes the bass, the album’s messages are not overtaken for the attentive listener. It prompts the question of what draws you in the most: the beats, the message, a well-engineered balance? For me, it depends on the actual moment I’m listening, with most falling under the latter. Letting myself be carried by quiet listening, in turn, informs what I’m attracted to.
Awkward is an adept producer.
Soulful backing vocals by Brevi Dubois, sparingly used and expertly placed (Join Malkovich), were an absolute necessity to counterbalance heavy, masculine themes and the equally hard-hitting, luscious bass. And in Covenant of the Cloaks, Doseone punctuates the entire vocal range of the album, sounding a little like a Gollum-possessed Eminem.
The sonic crown jewel, the distorted synth in Fiend Mode, sounded like it could have come straight from the 1983 version of ‘Scarface’ much more than the foreboding ‘Clockwork Orange’ film theme. Just those few notes and I pictured Elvira descending in the glass elevator, or Tony’s fierce obsession over his sister Gina!
Soulful backing vocals by Brevi Dubois, sparingly used and expertly placed (Join Malkovich), were an absolute necessity to counterbalance heavy, masculine themes and the equally hard-hitting, luscious bass.
At various points, echoes of Prince’s Let’s Go Crazy, Supreme Force’s You Gotta Come Out Fresh, Egyptian Lover, and Kraftwerk lent golden-age influence. I hoped that, for all the intentionality of the album, the latter two were covert nods to Freemasonry and dystopian society.
The Cloaks own a unique piece of underground real estate but still pay respect to those who came before. Carrying thought-provoking, cohesive themes, both critical and positive thought, diverse vocals, supreme bass and synth including well-placed distortions, this unreproducible LP has a lot to offer up, playing like a compilation more than a continuous narrative. Word to the wise: Pace yourself—and listen well.
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