Guitarist Ben Sharp's instrumental metal project Cloudkicker recently embarked on what will probably be the only tour ever done under the Cloudkicker name opening for Tesseract. Sharp was backed by all the members of Intronaut, which makes sense since Intronaut was also on the tour and Sharp can't play five instruments at once. Now you can hear the effort's live performance streaming in full below via Bandcamp! The album was recorded live in Austin, TX on April 6, 2014 at Fathom Tree Recording Studio and will be released November 24 through Century Media Records.
It'll also be the only Cloudkicker release that isn't available for free download. Sharp commented on that situation via his blog.
"Obviously this is a bit of a departure from the usual way that Cloudkicker music is released. On the plus side, this album will be afforded all the press and promotion that is expected when a proper label puts an album out. I imagine that the distribution will be another plus for those of you living in parts of the world that pay very high shipping costs from the U.S. The drawback is that I won’t be able to extend the courtesy of free downloads like I normally do. In fact you won’t be able to download it from Bandcamp at all, although you will be able to stream it from there. I’m sure those of you that are more resourceful will not find yourselves impacted much from this change.
The complications that arose from Intronaut being on Century Media made it so this was the most practical way to release the album. I don’t have the infrastructure or accounting know-how to take care of the financials otherwise.
So yay! Live album! Also no, I am not on Century Media now nor will I be going forward. Or any label for that matter."
Speaking of Clouckicker, it's been over a year since he's released something… which is unusual. I bet we'll get something soon!
