storm clouds is a San Diego based slowcore project and their new album F.O.G. was self-released earlier this month (streaming below). storm clouds is an alias for Dima Zadorozhny, who fronts the solo project. He describes his sound as “dreamfuzz” which is an accurate sonic interpretation for the underlying tone heard throughout the album.
F.O.G. is adequately named as it gives you the pacing feeling of floating through an airy nothingness, but realizing that the thickness of the clouds surrounding you were holding you up all along. For Dima, F.O.G. was the light at the end of a creative-slump-tunnel and burnout of trying out a new career in audio engineering. The album was inspired by an act of defiance, stripping away the bells and whistles of audio engineering software and recording as lo-fi as possible. The product was built on the clean (although limited) slate of a cassette four-track and drums were either from toy keyboard presets or recorded from a simple one-mic drum setup.
The album tells the story of this process – with the opening track “fog” explaining this feeling of being stuck in front of a screen and the sense of fleeting time. The production choice of turning away from computers, plugins, and amps, was not just a way to turn away from an unfulfilling career, but also forged a creative process that proved to be more inspiring and fulfilling. Listening to “stick around” and noticing the panning drums in your headphones at the end of the song becomes exciting, knowing all that went into the process of creating that analog sound effect. “to-do list” does an excellent job emulating task paralysis: the feeling of being overwhelmed to the point of being stuck and not knowing where or how to start. Dima shared more on the album and process below:
For this project, I was trying to get back into making music after a few years of a creative slump. A while back I tried to make audio engineering my career and I was working part-time at a studio, learning Pro Tools and all the plugins and fancy gear, trying to record and mix for paying clients to make ends meet. I got pretty burnt out after a few years of that and for some time couldn’t stand the thought of opening up a new Pro Tools file or picking up a guitar. So I wanted to break the block by making it really easy for myself and sort of reconnecting with what drew me to music and recording in the first place.
I’ve always been inspired by lo-fi music and that approach, so I recorded and mixed these songs all on the cassette four-track–no computers, no plugins, not even any guitar amps, and a one-mic drum setup (or drum presets from toy keyboards). I cut out as much decision-making as possible and tried to focus on just being creative. (Unfortunately the four-track came with its own set of drawbacks…) Same with the songwriting–just super simple guitar and drum parts that are easy to play and basic, repetitive song structures. I wanted to give myself permission to make something “bad” or unpolished, just because making something is better than making nothing. In the past, I always struggled with spending way too long on a project, but with this approach, I was able to start and finish something in a few months, actually have fun making music again, and feel the creative inspiration start re-flowing.
F.O.G. also covers themes surrounding mental health:
Theme-wise, it’s all about mental health: overcoming depression, healing from trauma, finding purpose in life, breaking unhealthy patterns, gaining deeper self-understanding, dealing with executive dysfunction (“brain fog”), escaping toxic individuals, moving on from mistakes, coming to terms with getting older, making the most out of life with the time you have left. I could go on and on but hopefully the songs speak for themselves.
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