High Horse

(This is the first of many Whinnies and Neighs. We hope you enjoy and share with a friend, and keep an eye out for future additions to the series.)

It must’ve been the Fall of 2017 when Corey Light first made The Great High Horse aware of a band from Indiana called Cloakroom. At that time, Cloakroom had just released Time Well, a 10 song tour de force of pulsing, shoegazy doom and gloom. Replete with clever songwriting, scurrying drums and bass, and growling melodic leads, Time Well is a ripper of an album, singular and stunning, not only worthy but demanding of your time and attention.

What separates Time Well from similar, arguably more popular efforts in the contemporary shoegaze genre, such as Deafheaven’s 2021 album Infinite Granite, or Nothing’s 2020 album The Great Dismal (on which Doyle Martin, lead guitarist and vocalist for Cloakroom, contributed guitar and vocals) is the unrelenting necessity of each turn in the musical sequence. No second of recording is wasted, no song could be considered simple filler. From the ritualistic pounding of drums which opens “Gone but Not Entirely,” to the chopping ethereal riffing of “Sickle Moon Blues,” right down to the sorrowfully melodic soloing of “The Sun Won’t Let Us Go,” Time Well is a vision realized.

In January of 2022, Cloakroom released the conceptual Dissolution Wave. While accounting for nearly half the total recording time of Time Well, at a cool and stolid 37 minutes, Dissolution Wave perhaps demonstrates more tonal and lyrical variety than it’s predecessor, is a masterful performance in it’s own right, and belies greater heights to come for a band already defining the style of music they play by way of their ever expanding catalogue.

In this conversation, Corey Light talks to Bobby Markos, bassist for Cloakroom, and videographer for Lost Speedways (a series about abandoned race tracks you can watch on Peacock), about the esoterica behind the recording of Dissolution Wave, Cloakroom’s working relationship with Matt Talbot of the band Hum, and the various contributions and eccentricities of drummer Tim Remis. Featured below is a snippet from said interview:

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BM

Tim says, “Okay sounds good, I’ll see you there at 8.” It becomes 9 then 10 and it’s just getting so late…And it’s just like, where is this dude.

Tim says, “It’s all good, I’ll show up, and we just won’t sleep. We’ll just record straight through and it’ll be great.”

I thought he was joking. Tim shows up at 4 in the morning finally, we load his drum kit in, he starts taking his drum kit out of the shells, and he’s just talking about his night, “Yeah man I had to pull all these favors in to get this car.” You know, like typical Tim stuff basically…

CL

The way you’ve portrayed him reminds me of (Dennis) Rodman (of Chicago Bull and North Korean fame)…

BM

Yep.

Tim is the Center of the band. All Star Center. Hall of Famer. But you definitely have to plan for the unexpected because you know something is going to happen. I don’t know what form this is going to take but I know it is going to happen…

You can listen to the rest of this interview / candid phone call at the link at the top of the page or right here!

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Corey Light is a guitarist for Lubbock based band Last of the Lights. When he grows up, he hopes to become King of the Cloakheads.