Goodbye, Faithful Interview! with Codes In The Clouds

Codes In The Clouds headline Goodbye, faithful Kingdom! on August 4th, advance tickets can be found here.

I bumped into the band whilst staring at the clouds in the sky and asked them a few questions:

The beautiful music of Codes In the Clouds is entirely sans-vocals. What particularly interests you about instrumental music?

With instrumental music the listener can take what they want from it. There's no default reaction for people to have, no set paths for people's emotional response to run down. At gigs we sometimes get different people from the same crowd telling us about two completely different opinions of the songs we've played. The other thing is that we all individually listen to music where lyrics are the focal point, and we enjoy when someone can express what they have to say in a song, but it's important not to fill your material with words just for the sake of it.

You’re sent on a long mission to discover codes within the clouds. What five albums are you going to take with you?

That makes one each.
Stephen = Elliott Smith- Figure 8.
Joe = Beach Boys - Pet Sounds.
Rob = Oceansize - Music For Nurses.
Ciaran = Mogwai - Come On Die Young.
Jack = Radiohead - Kid A.

You’ve been compared to the likes of Mono & Explosions In The Sky. This inevitably leads to writers using the frankly redundant term ‘post-rock’ to describe your music. You ok with that?

We're fine with people calling it whatever they want. If people pay us the compliment of talking about our music then we're happy for them to say what they like. It's nice to even be floating around people's consciousness at all. Anyway, maybe all genre is redundant because it's so subjective. That's why you end up with so many differently tailored sub-genres and so many ineffective catch-all terms like 'indie' or 'urban' music.

You recently worked with US film-maker Mike Hedge, how did that come about?

He got in contact with Erased Tapes and said he was a fan of the label's stuff. We really liked his stuff, so it was perfect to work together. It was really fun to make the video with Mike and MacGregor, even though it involved dancing on a cold beach in December.

There’s an unsubstantiated theory that Schoenberg’s Second Viennese School was set up in order to transmit codes within their serial music to the Nazi’s during the Second World War. Are there any codes or messages hidden within your music?

If anyone can find any codes in there they're welcome to let us know. Take that as a challenge if you like.


There’s a club in existence called The Cloud Appreciation Society who express their love for those fascinating floating fluffy things in the sky. Are you members of any appreciation societies? If not, what society would you set up to celebrate your obsessions?

We're all a little obsessed with the rules and intricacies of social minutia. We like to point out the faux-pas we see around us, and criticise each other's mistakes. So maybe the 'Society for the Enforcement of Faux-Pas Law' ? The S.E.F.P.L ?

You’ve done a lot of touring; where’s the most memorable place you’ve played?

Well, Rough Trade and The Union Chapel in London were incredible. But in terms of atmosphere and energy, the 13th Note in Glasgow and Cafe Zapata in Berlin were really special.

Your ace debut album ‘Paper Crayon’ was released in May this year on the label Erased Tapes. It has gained some great reviews including an (8/10) in Clash Magazine who said “it’s a perfectly presented first statement of their intentions, sending jolts from shoulders to fingertips”. Do you have any current plans for a second ‘statement’ or are you just concentrating on touring at the moment?

We have one grand idea for the second album as a whole, and a couple of songs basically finished, but it's all in the early stages of production right now. We write in and around touring so new stuff creeps into the set when we really like it. There's one song, that will definitely be on the second album, that we play almost every show now.

Are there any new bands you’re particularly fond of?

We really like The Shortwave Set, Rival Consoles and Tubelord. Oh and we're really into Baked Clouds, his EP is awesome. We're really happy because we've managed to get a Baked Clouds Remix on Paper Canyon Recycled.