A Quick Chat with The Cloud Maker

You recently went on a regional tour of Victoria and Sydney to celebrate the album, and you’ll soon be playing shows at WOMADelaide from March 8 to 10. What can punters expect from your live shows?

Five powerful women on stage blowing your mind! Expect to hear sounds and instruments you have never heard before, to be taken on a journey with us and to come out the other side transformed. You can also expect to be wowed by the spectacular costumes that Kate Davis has made for us. Moon-shaped head dresses that transform into bejewelled balaclavas, which help us to embody the power of the goddesses that have inspired this music.

The Cloud Maker have released your debut, self-titled album on Feb 28. Tell us a bit about what inspired the record?

The concept for The Cloud Maker came about when I met Te Kahureremoa Taumata at The Banff Centre in Canada in 2019. In a little wooden hut surrounded by the snowy forest, Te Kahureremoa shared with me the story of the Maori moth goddess Raukatauri, the creation story of the Putorino, a cocoon shaped flute, and just one of the Taonga Pūoro (singing treasures) that Taumata plays. Each figure in the story was accompanied by their own unique sound on the flute. When I returned home, I couldn't stop thinking about the potential of integrating music and cultural stories in this way, so I gathered up a group of 5 masterful musicians who each brought to the project their highly individual musical voices as well as their stories. Meeting at the Ukaria Cultural Centre with an expanded lineup including Sunny Kim (voice), Maria Moles (drums) Freya Schack-Arnott (cello and nyckelharpa/Nordic Fiddle) alongside myself (winds/electronics/piano) and Te Kahureremoa Taumata (voice/ Taonga Pūoro), we became acquainted with Mayari, the Filipino goddess of the moon, Freya, the Norse Goddess of love, fertility, battle and death, Princess Bari who is worshipped by Korean shamans and is told to have resurrected her parents with the water of life, Miriam, the Jewish prophetess who inspired women into song and dance after crossing The Red Sea, and who carried a miraculous well as they wandered through the desert, The Selkies, mythological Irish creatures who can transform between seal and human form, and Hine Pu Te Hue, the goddess of the gourd who swallows the storm.

We did one concert after that week together, and rather than feeling like the end of a process, it felt like it was just the beginning! We had to find a way to get back together and keep playing music together, so that’s when we started finding ways to make a record together.

How did all of the members of The Cloud Maker come together? And what has driven you all to the sound and style that you’ve achieved together?

I brought this group of women together primarily because they are all incredible improvisers and have a really unique and individual way of playing their instruments. They each have incredible solo practices and records, and I knew that bringing them together would create music that was full of fire and beauty.

What was the process like creating The Cloud Maker album? Writing, recording, etc.?

It has been such a privilege and joy to work with this group of women. Everyone has been incredibly supportive of each other to grow personally and musically through this process. I think we have all given each other the courage to go to some new places in ourselves and in our music, and that’s what makes this music so powerful. It is a real act of generosity and bravery that each musician has shared so much of themselves and their culture in this project.

Tell us about the album’s focus track, ‘Daughters of the Forest’?

Daughters of the Forest is a track that emerged quite spontaneously in the studio, almost an alternative take of another track ‘Dance from the Afterlife’ (but we decided to keep them both!). Both tracks are about women coming together to rejoice their freedom, partly inspired by the story of Miriam leading women in song and dance after crossing The Red Sea.

The centre of Daughters of the Forest is an accapella vocal jam, surrounded by prepared piano, and joyous outbursts of a water flute and Te Kahureremoa’s chirping bird calls created using her knuckles against her mouth. We decided to release this as the final single for the album because it is all of us joining together with the most elemental musical form- the voice. We’re not all singers, but there is something so simple and joyful about connecting with one another through singing. The track lent itself very easily to being a film clip. Sabina Maselli made a beautiful video where you see each of our faces spinning around in the night sky, almost as though we are becoming the mythical figures that inspired the project.

What do you want listeners to take away from these tracks?

We have found that our music encourages our audiences to connect with their own cultures, to research the stories of their family heritages, and to find out more about the archetypal figures and epic myths that inform their cultures. There is so much juicy stuff in there that has resonances for our modern lives and we hope that our audiences will find listening to this music as transformative as we have ourselves.

What can we expect from The Cloud Maker in the coming months?

Next stop for us is WOMADelaide, which is incredible because it was top of our bucket list places to play, and one of our first bookings. But we hope this is just the beginning, many more concerts in the pipeline, so keep your ears out!