Ocean of Hours – David Cloyd (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

With his first record in over a decade, Red Sky Warning, due out next year, this first single reminds us exactly why the music scene is a much better place when David Cloyd is taking an active part in it. Asking the same question as Sandy Denny’s haunting “Who Knows Where The Time Goes,” whereas her musing of the passing of the years was a thing of floating folk finery, Cloyd’s chronophobic question is a more robust piece of indie intrigue.

“Ocean of Hours’” relentless ticking rhythm underlines the passage of time as dark sound washes ebb and flow across the face of the song, brooding electronica and raw sonics woven into an emotive musical body. And across these dense and delicious sounds dances Cloyd’s cool and composed vocals, somehow simultaneously world-weary and celebrating togetherness.

It’s an anthemic experience for the listener, one that rises out of that minimal beat and vocal opening, moving through ever-expansive additional tones and textures; the song then cloaks itself in ever-weightier sonics as it moves towards its final destination, creating a wonderful dynamic as it explores sonic ebbs and flows, lulls and crescendoes as it goes.

Folk music has always been the home of such weighty and worldly concerns, but Cloyd reminds us that alternative-pop, indie, or whatever you would label his own brand of mercurial music, is more than up to the job at hand—the job at hand being to forge music that makes you think as well as feel.

A job well and truly done.

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