Central Australian music duo Cloud Sequence release Heimwee/Verwee, a stunning new extended play, inspired by physical isolation, a deep respect for Arrernte land and a yearning for a home far away.

Released on iTunes, Spotify and Bandcamp, Heimwee/Verwee comes on the heels of their breathtaking 5-track EP, Rpt. Esc. (January 2020) made from durational live improvisations.

Forming in 2019, Cloud Sequence is Saar Amptmeijer from Utrecht, the Netherlands, and Jez Conlon from Adelaide, South Australia. They live and work in Mparntwe/Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. Often imbued with textural field recordings, their music is inspired and created on the vast desert lands of the Arrernte peoples whose sovereignty was never ceded.

“We were in an isolated period in June 2020. In Central Australia we watched the world from a distance. We live on an island, on an island, here,” they say about the making of Heimwee/Verwee.“Heimwee is often associated with homesickness”, they explain about the track’s Dutch-language title. “Verwee is a longing for travel and distant unknown places”.

“It’s a title of longing and total opposites - a longing for home and for adventure,” something sure to resonate with a world now facing isolation and restricted movement, for the foreseeable future.

Coming in at 12:20, Heimwee/Verwee unites raw sounds, performance and atmospheres sourced from “out on a hill on Arrernte land” and Saar’s country of birth, The Netherlands. As Cloud Sequence explain, these were then “manipulated and stretched” in-studio, upon which “synthesizer, guitar, words and other field recordings and found sounds were then layered”.

A powerful poem, spoken by Saar in their mother tongue, completes the overture, reminding us that the world has suddenly become a much bigger, unknown place. Where do we go from here?

Cycling through a series of languid movements, the result is a superbly moving, cavernous musical lament – a sonic ‘depth charge’ that spaciously ignites our innermost vulnerabilities around place, belonging and loss. It drones, it throbs. Dissolves. It is the sound of human frailty.

Heimwee/Verwee is a lush, moody internal conversation between two thoughtful performers who understand the interdependency between nature and humanity. Likewise, it explores the tenuous, illusory hold we have over certainty and the external world. In the blink of an eye eveything can vanish.

“You are listening to a field recording which has been turned into a mood, a textural bed, a sonic poem”, they say. “It speaks about a present common thread, perhaps. Timely or not? We hope you enjoy.”

‘Heimwee/Verwee’ is out now on iTunes, Spotify, Bandcamp + all streaming platforms

We hope you enjoy 🖤