“There are these innocent elements, like balloons and carnival kind of motifs or whatever… but I think underneath there's something that's a bit more sinister and… the balloon will pop, so to speak.”
Welcome to the strange world of Cloud Ice 9, our latest Independent Artist of the Week. Hailing from the long Naarm lockdown and a slow, fruitful gestation in the barns and attics of sharehouses, Cloud Ice 9 has blossomed into one of the most adventurous and bewildering bands of the post-covid Antipodes.
“We were out the back just playing with these little keyboards for hours and hours and sort of growing the hive mind and building the weird, like, sound world or whatever.”
Cloud Ice 9’s sound world is hard to categorise. Any hints of familiar genres or classic songwriting devices are made strange by everything else, from kooky toy instruments to surreal stories from robot voices. Much like their previous records 8 Ball (2020), Circus St (2002) & Hocus Pocus (2023), their new LP Globophobia (2025) is an odyssey of darkly humorous musings on humanity, floating on a bed of wonky experiments and the dankest grooves that could ever have been mistakenly summed up as post-punk.
Globophobia is deeply permeated by metaphorical representations of frontperson Jordan Obarzanek’s humorous and apocalyptic visions. No matter how bizarre or disconnected that his lyrics appear, at their heart they deal with an incisive, sci-fi skepticism of the works of humanity and their systems. Sometimes it’s the voice of the literal ‘worker bee’, shackled to the corporate system by their queen bee held hostage (‘Dead Queen Honey’). At other times, it’s the voice of fish, aware of its imprisonment but pacified by the pretty stones or bubbles in its home (‘Fishtank World’).
Chatting on Real to Reel after Globophobia’s release, Jordan says:
“Well at the start, I said it's about raising apocalypse awareness”
The many figures and symbols on Globophobia are brought together in the music video of the opening track, ‘The Devil & His Caddy’. They all play out together in a chaotic carnival of scenes, like a piece of retro arthouse cinema.
For those with trouble following the plot:
“It sort of all ties in with the clock man, who's sort of, to me, like mortality man, chomping off the balloons of the box goblins.”
With a home on their self-run label Happy Tapes, Cloud Ice 9 are surrounded by a never-ending series of side projects, a testament to the boundless creativity displayed by all band members.
If you haven’t already, go and listen (and watch) your way through all this amazing stuff, and jump on board this weird ride brought to you by Cloud Ice 9.
Love,
Jasper
Words by Jasper Craig-Adams