You’ll never run out of music on the Internet. There’s new bands and songs to download every day. Soundcloud has made listening to all that music easy, plus it’s free. But with your new favorite song waiting to be clicked on, there’s the possibility that you don’t know where to start. So we decided to try and help out by sharing a few of our Soundcloud favorites. Thus, we have Soundcloud Selections – where we at the New School Free Press will try our best each week to highlight some of the newest and brightest artists, interviewing them for your reading pleasure and selecting a few tunes we think you might just like.
For our second edition of Soundcloud Selections we have little cloud legally known as Diane Marie. The exquisite singer, who’s collaborated with the likes of Ryan Hemsworth, Druture, and her boyfriend, Sad Boy/rap producer Yung Sherman. She has created a sound that’s completely her own. The combination of vocal loops and dreamy/neon/glittered-out production make for soothing and hypnotic songs that usually clock in under three minutes. little cloud’s music is unlike anything we’ve been listening to lately and if her number of plays, which range in the hundreds of thousands, count for anything we’d bet you’ll be hearing more songs tagged with #jealousgirlfriend in the future.
New School Free Press: Who are you? Where are you from? What’s your name?
little cloud: I’m Diane. I’m from London and now I live in Stockholm.
NSFP: Why do you go as little cloud?
lc: A few years ago I started writing a children’s book called “Slow Down, Little Cloud” and that’s where it came from.
NSFP: How’d you start making music?
lc: I’ve been making music under a bunch of different names for over 10 years but little cloud is about two years old.
NSFP: Is music your main interest right now or is it something you pursue on the side?
lc: My main interest is being in love.
NSFP: I was trying to describe your music to a friend and told him your songs are like the Internet singing itself to sleep. How do you describe your own music to someone who asks you about it? Feel free to use silly genre names and/or ridiculous descriptions.
lc: Love songs.
NSFP: How do you make your songs (laptop/studio/bedroom)?
lc: Ableton* and iPhone headphones.
NSFP: Do you use your own vocals or samples or featured singers on your songs? I honestly can’t tell and I think that’s part of what makes your music so interesting.
lc: Every voice is my voice.
NSFP: If you are singing on your songs, how do you compose them? Do the lyrics come first or the actual production of the song?
lc: I make and record all my songs in pretty much one take so all the “lyrics” are made after I make the music and I just make sounds that sound OK. I never write lyrics, really.
NSFP: How did you meet Yung Sherman?
lc: We liked each other’s music.
NSFP: Do you two ever work together on music? Or give each other feedback on each other’s songs because your styles seem quite different from each other?
lc: We’ve released like, four songs collaborating with each other in some way and there are more on the way. We are both usually the first people who hear each other’s music because we live together. I value his opinion of my work very much because he is my idol.
NSFP: What happened to the children’s book? Did you ever finish it? Is it published?
lc: No, I never finished it but some day I would like to, maybe.
NSFP: You said you’ve been making music for 10 years now, so did you go to school for music or are you mostly self taught? Play in any bands or have you always been solo?
lc: I am self taught, my parents are/were musicians. My mom still sings in a blues band. She is amazing. My dad passed away almost six years ago now but was an incredible blues guitarist. That’s how they met actually, they were in a band together. I’ve been in bands when I was younger. I’ve been a session vocalist for a major label and I was offered a recording and publishing deal with that label when I was 11, but I turned it down, haha. My indie sensibility blossomed early. I have been making solo music since 2006-ish. I was a noise artist first of all. My first live solo show was a breakcore⧨ night in my home town. Since then I did shows all over London and the South of England under different names. I took like a break from music to study and write from 2009 to 2012-ish, then came back with the little cloud stuff early 2013, I think.
NSFP: Why the move to Sweden?
lc: To be with my boyfriend! :—)
NSFP: Aside from Yung Sherman, have you done any other collaborations? If not, are you open to working with others?
lc: I have collaborated with Ryan Hemsworth on the instrumental for “Spotless” by Tink, Sasha Go-Hard and Kitty Pryde, and a song on his new album that’s out in a couple of days I think. Last year I sang on a song Yung Gud made called “A Title Is Required.” Druture and I did a cover of Chief Keef’s “Round Da Rosey” in late 2013, which was later remixed by the amazing Fifty Grand. I collaborated more in my early days of the little cloud project, but not so much at the moment as I’m trying to focus on my own sound a bit more. But I still have stuff in the pipelines! Special things!
NSFP: Do you have plans to perform live or is little cloud music meant to be heard strictly over headphones?
lc: I’ve done one live show as little cloud, that was back in August I think, just after boyfriend got back from his U.S. tour. It was in Stockholm and it had a really good turn out. I want to do more shows soon. I have been asked to go to a few places for shows, but I need to get someone to help me arrange all that stuff if I’m going to do it, a manager or something. Eventually.
NSFP: Has your voice always been the obvious choice in your songs or is it something you came to realize over time?
lc: I was a vocalist first before anything else, so my voice has always been my number one instrument. All my early music focused around vocal loops.
NSFP: Did you learn to use Ableton recently or have you’ve known for a while?
lc: I started using Ableton last summer and it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I’m still learning and growing into it. I’m still very much a beginner.
NSFP: Do you understand what you’re singing after you listen to your songs? Do the lyrics make sense or are they just strung together out of improvisation?
lc: Sometimes I know what I am saying as I say it even if it doesn’t make “sense.” Some songs, like “Jealous Girlfriend” for example, was made up of layers and layers of sounds, with some “real words” that, eventually, after listening lots of times, I “found” lyrics for.
NSFP: Do you have any plans to release your music outside of Soundcloud? Either through self-release or on a label?
lc: There were plans for a while to release my first proper thing on a U.S. label, but there was some stuff that went on with the people who ran it, mainly a clash of ideologies, that meant that no longer happened. At the moment I have plans only to finish and release it (#jealousgirlfriend) as soon as possible. I kind of said I would do it when I reached 10,000 Soundcloud followers but thats getting really close now so I don’t know if I will have it done in time, lol.
*A software music sequencer and digital audio workstation for OS X and Windows.
⧨ A style of electronic dance music largely influenced by hardcore, jungle, digital hardcore and industrial music that is characterized by its use of heavy kick drums, breaks and a wide palette of sampling sources, played at high tempos.