{"id":13219,"date":"2026-07-02T15:46:57","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T20:46:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/?p=13219"},"modified":"2026-07-03T15:13:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T20:13:09","slug":"cloud-circuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2026\/07\/02\/cloud-circuit\/","title":{"rendered":"Cloud Circuit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Maggie A. Clark<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cloud Circuit are a duo from Montr\u00e9al whose work could be described using some combination of the following phrases, preferably chopped up and arranged in an arbitrary yet mellifluous order: musique concr\u00e8te, found sound, electroacoustic, deconstructed poetry. On June 12, they put out a self-titled album, their first studio release in six years. Stylus<\/em> sat down with Deanna Radford (Stylus<\/em> editor, 2000\u20132003) and Jeremy Young to talk about the new album, its resonances, and the future of the music commodity form. The two of them were sitting in front of a wall of analogue sound equipment, eating out of a large bowl of popcorn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness. Even more so than usual, I\u2019d say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stylus: So, Deanna, here\u2019s a question I have to ask all Winnipeg expats: why did you leave? What\u2019s so cool about Montr\u00e9al?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jeremy Young<\/strong> (JY<\/strong>): God, just digging right in, aren\u2019t you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deanna Radford<\/strong> (DR<\/strong>): I didn\u2019t move away from Winnipeg; I moved toward<\/em> Montreal. I didn\u2019t leave because I didn\u2019t love Winnipeg. I moved for love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JY<\/strong>: Not me, by the way. This isn\u2019t\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DR<\/strong>: Yeah, he\u2019s like my brother. My partner at the time had a job offer, and Montr\u00e9al \u2014 we went there all the time to see music and art, and the proximity to the firehose of creativity was super stimulating to me. That relationship didn\u2019t pan out, but I felt like I still had shit to do here. I had questions to figure out the answers to, creatively and otherwise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stylus: Your bio describes Cloud Circuit as consisting of \u201cDeanna Radford on deconstructed word events, and Jeremy Young on tape, sine waves, and radio.\u201d Two questions come to mind from this: one, what makes a word an event? And two, what draws you to tape manipulations and radio waves as a medium of sound conveyance? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

DR<\/strong>: I think Jeremy should go first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JY<\/strong>: As you can see behind me, my studio is chock-full of analogue, half-broken gear. I was trained as a guitarist. I have been in many bands. I don\u2019t know why, but as soon as I started putting other things through amps when I was younger, like in my 20s \u2014 listening to the radio, trying to transmit [it] through the amp, listening to the carrier wave failing to transmit high-fidelity audio through a tube amp, or putting magnetic tape through the amp and then messing with the speed of the tape, or whatever \u2014 I just became enamoured by the sound possibilities of the physicality of audio in that way and the possibilities of music to be created from these alternative sound sources. And so when I was younger, I just fell in love with the history of 20th century music concr\u00e8te, electroacoustics, and radio art. But why I have continued this practice is because I am an artist that really enjoys limitations. I set very strict limitations for myself. All of these machines are monophonic machines, which means they only emit a single frequency that I need to hand tune in order to get it to either a note or a microtonal frequency in between notes, quarter tones, et cetera. And so [I have] a very thoroughly thought-out process of how I use my body and my hands and my ears to shape these sounds and tones into musical patterns, and it\u2019s not easy. There\u2019s no keyboard interface. I can’t just put my fingers down on a keyboard and make a chord. So, the process for me of limiting my possibilities has opened up many new possibilities of organizing sound. And I am just in love with the challenge of that and the results of that. I find it so personal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stylus: Where does one find magnetic tape these days?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

JY<\/strong>: eBay. Mostly just dead people’s garage sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stylus: Oh boy. And what makes a word an \u201cevent\u201d? Would it be possible for a word to be a non-event?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

DR<\/strong>: Always, always. A \u201cword event\u201d \u2014 I think that that phrasing comes from a sense of play, but also that it comes from both of us being writers and listeners and also\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JY<\/strong>: Popcorn enjoyers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DR<\/strong>: Yeah. It comes from so many places, like for me, being a person learning how to feel comfortable speaking at all. So it\u2019s a movement toward speaking poetry \u2014 not on the page, but in sound \u2014 in an embodied, physical way. Part of [what makes] the performance of words an \u201cevent\u201d [is] when you share it, when you perform a word, or you collaborate. [And] in a performance, people come to listen. So all of these intersecting things \u2014 me, my words that I\u2019ve written, and collaborating, and how the sound of the word interacts with the sound of magnetic tape being harnessed by Jeremy \u2014 all of that is what contributes to it being an event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JY<\/strong>: I\u2019ve always thought of it as, like, [speech] makes the word malleable because a word carries meaning, and I think when you speak a word, you can change how you speak it. [You can call that] a sonic event: it\u2019s something that comes out of your vocal cords and then it exists in a shared space and then it becomes something that is at play, as you said. It\u2019s malleable, the meaning of it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

DR<\/strong>: And it\u2019s exposed to air, so it becomes physical and also it can change with [the speaker\u2019s] style of delivery and so on. I also want to connect to something Jeremy mentioned about constraints or restrictions. I think the only way I can really generate words is by setting constraints for myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stylus: So, about the new album, <\/strong>Cloud Circuit<\/em><\/strong>. The press release your label sent me claims that it \u201cde-emphasizes engagement via digital streaming services.\u201d An admirable goal, to be sure, and one that I share, but how is that possible when I listened to it via a download link that directed me to your Bandcamp page?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

DR<\/strong>: I\u2019m not sure. I think that [phrasing] could [have been a bit more] nuanced, in the sense that the platform oligarchy is slippery. And I love octopuses, but it\u2019s also a shape-shifting economy. So there are absolutely some platforms that our music is available on that are party to nefarious operations, like YouTube. […] So we want to be judicious about\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JY<\/strong>: Well, it\u2019s not going to be on the major streaming platforms. […] Bandcamp\u2019s a great company. Bandcamp supports artists. It\u2019s been bought and sold like cattle, but they remain a good place for discovery. [But the album is] not gonna be on Spotify, it\u2019s not gonna be on Apple Music. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stylus: I appreciate the range of typically non-musical objects that were deployed in the recording of the album \u2014 for instance, chopsticks, a pine branch, egg timers. I had a noise project with a few friends in high school where I regularly played the stapler. What are your favourite non-musical objects to recontextualize in musical settings?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

JY<\/strong>: When we were recording in the studio, Deanna had brought a coil of fibre optic cable, and she had it in her mouth a lot. So there\u2019s a lot of stuff that you can\u2019t really hear upfront, but it\u2019s in the background of garbled words and wiry mouth sounds. We also put it on a snare drum skin and we were sort of playing around with the physicality of that sound. Which, to us, was conceptual, because we\u2019re sort of playing with the idea of the cable\u2019s ability to connect and transmit, or not \u2014 but it doesn’t necessarily change the music that much. It really was just sort of a playful sonic source. But, for me, […] in my studio, I have a lot of contact mics. And so I\u2019m always using things with contact mics, and I\u2019ve found that the paintbrush is an incredibly dynamic and diverse source of sound. A lot of the kickdrum sounds [on the album] are just a low end thump of the paintbrush, and then a lot of the high end is the tips of the brushes. So this thing can do a lot. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stylus: On the flipside of that last question, are there any non-musical objects you\u2019ve been wanting to deploy in a musical setting, but which haven\u2019t translated the way you\u2019ve hoped? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

DR<\/strong>: I would say the fibre optic cable also, because when I put it in my mouth, it\u2019s like a piece of glass the size of a hair. Maybe I just need to spend more time with it, but I also didn\u2019t feel that it was a fruitful thing to do. I think I just have to be open to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JY<\/strong>: I would like to answer by saying [that] I want to work with non-sound-making objects at large \u2014 silent objects. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stylus: What is a silent object? What object can be struck but not emit sound?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

JY<\/strong>: I was thinking, like, taxidermied animals or something. But I guess if you slap a taxidermied animal, it’s gonna make a sound. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stylus: On the note of taxidermied animals, I did want to focus on one track from the new record, \u201cThe Birds of Champ des possibles.\u201d First of all, excellent use of bird song. I always love that. Are either of you birders?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

DR<\/strong>: I\u2019m a nascent birder. I\u2019ve spent a lot of time thinking about them and figuring out where the birds in my neighbourhood come from and where they go, but also their migration pathways on the continent, for example, the Mississippi Flyway. All of that to say, I find them fascinating. I wouldn\u2019t profess to be a very proficient birder, but I love learning about them. And also the artwork on our album [is adapted from a book of photographs by Julius Neubronner]. He built a camera harness to go around his pet pigeon\u2019s neck, and the pigeon took all of these incredible aerial photos. […] Are you a birder, Maggie?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stylus: No, not really. I see a bird and I smile and I think, \u201coh, that’s a nice sound that it\u2019s making.\u201d And then that\u2019s where my exploration typically ends. So the song lists a number of birds \u2014 among them, Cooper\u2019s hawk, red-winged blackbird, cedar waxwing, dark-eyed junco, et cetera \u2014 and ends on the phrase \u201ccolonial names.\u201d This strikes me as a comment on how our perceptions of the world around us are structured in advance, even in subtle, seemingly innocuous ways, by the world-historic crimes of European and Euro-American states. I wonder if you could speak to that.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

DR<\/strong>: I have roots in Ukraine and Poland, and [a few years ago,] my partner and I watched a course about the history of Ukraine from the year 1000 to present. Timothy Snyder, the American historian, quoted some other historian who talked about this idea that the language that a person is born into is obviously not without bias. But also the language that I use, being born into English as a Canadian settler, is using me<\/em> as much as I use it. And so that\u2019s something I think about a lot. Like, if I were born in Ukraine with a different mother tongue, how would that look? And how do these things look over time, across time, through generations? So, to me, that colonial aspect, I don\u2019t intend it ever to be a clich\u00e9, but it\u2019s partly related to my own trying to understand where I come from and what problems that brings with it. […] The bird names [included in the song] are based on a biodiversity guide from Champ des possibles, in my neighbourhood, where the birds that are resident or [which] pass through every year are listed. And the guide lists the English name, the Latin name, and the French name, but it doesn\u2019t have the Mohawk names. So I cycle through it in recognition of where I come from, and I\u2019m part of that similar trajectory, but also that these [names] are not mine at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JY<\/strong>: I\u2019ve always thought of that poem as a connection. Thinking about the migratory patterns of birds and the migratory patterns of humans, and then settler colonialism or the slave trade being embedded in human migratory patterns. It\u2019s a choreography of caste in a way. That poem has always sort of been really special to me because it\u2019s sort of a movement through time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stylus: I first, and last, saw you perform at send+receive 2024 on a bill with Daniel Majer and Phew. Are there any tour plans in the works for the new record?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

JY<\/strong>: Yeah, except at the moment, it\u2019s just local. It\u2019s Qu\u00e9bec and Ontario. We did have ambitious plans to go out west and that will happen again soon, but, in the immediate future, I think the record\u2019s gonna come out and then we\u2019re gonna start having real conversations with people out west, but just with the cost of touring and the cost of transportation right now, it’s a little fraught.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stylus: In the history of recorded music, we’ve seen a procession from shellac discs to vinyl records to tapes to CDs and now, digital objects \u2014 [and] of course, all of these coexist and compete in the marketplace without any form totally supplanting the others. Do you have any predictions for what\u2019s next for the music commodity form?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

JY<\/strong>: I would say that they\u2019re not competing with shellac anymore, but\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DR<\/strong>: Audio through the Meta sunglasses, or an implant. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

JY<\/strong>: Ugh, you\u2019re probably so right. I mean, that could be kind of cool. [Imagine] butt implants where you get a left and a right speaker in your butt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stylus: I think there was that of Montreal album, [<\/strong>Skeletal Lamping<\/em><\/strong>, where] they sent people lamps and stuff with the digital [download] code attached to it.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

JY<\/strong>: Eight-tracks are coming back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DR<\/strong>: Eight-tracks all the way! I had this thought a while ago that people could have sound bouquets to give people or adorn their homes with. It might be like a home stereo system, but it would be an array of sound in an object. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

JY<\/strong>: Wait, hold on. It\u2019s time for a callback. Non-sounding objects! The new wave of commercial sound will be silent objects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DR<\/strong>: Sitting with rocks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

JY<\/strong>: Bands selling rocks and it\u2019s like, \u201cdoes it come with a download of the album?\u201d No. It\u2019s just a rock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stylus: Or just no more music. We have exhausted all potentials for music and now it\u2019s ended, forever. That could be [the next] thing. So, for my last question, I\u2019ll cut the oddball shit and just ask you something normal. What are your top five albums?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

DR\u2019s favourite musicians\/albums<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n