From the Region...

Welcome to the Midwaste... The Region, as it is miserably referred to, is a part of northwestern Indiana sharing a distinct flavor for indulging in nearby Chicago's urban glut. An overflow of despair, boredom, and post industrial hopelessness permeates the area and its populace. A haze of fuck all sentiment and anywhere is better than here wafts through the mentality of the residents. Life seems jumbled and slowed to a crawl as time tries to keep pace with the ever growing din of Chicago's crumbling and failing hopes and institutions flowing south along interstate 65. There is a certain kind of gloom that hangs over the area. This gloom radiates through the music of Cloakroom.

Cloakroom is a trio of factory workers hailing from the Region. Right away the gloom of their home and lives saturates everything about Cloakroom's slowcore haze. It's the fuzz of a bad relationship drowned in bottles of industrial and farm waste. This is a never ending relationship with a place and its people, that drags one's mental and physical health down to the factured streets going nowhere. Cloakroom crafts a blur of mid to late 90's anti-pop. Mid-tempo at its fastest, Cloakroom's music swells and sways like the meandering ways of a slow moving polluted river. There is the crunch from distorted guitar and bass when needed, never more than required or seemingly misplaced. The drums pound and accent with equal measure, and make sure to hold everything together. Cloakroom provoke a wandering carelessness with their music. If you end where you did not expect, then it may just be for the best. The vocals drone with a monotone bleakness that belies any hope. Cloakroom utilized a controlled sense of noise within their songs to drive the ambient elements into a shoegaze-y territory of fuzz and despair. The songs scorch the earth with a dusting of melancholy and bare emotion. Cloakroom are not a raging wildfire, but are the necessary controlled burn of a weed infested lot on a withered city block hinting at a minor renewal.

As factory workers, Cloakroom are sure to feel the strain of the death of middle America. Their music is a direct reflection of this. There is beauty in slow pain. There is beauty in loss. There is beauty in the failings of mankind. There is life nowhere (special). Cloakroom are on the edge of the void. Deciding to fall in or hang on a little longer, Cloakroom's music hints at the possibilities of a slight resurrection: a resurrection buoyed by a fractured and bleeding hope. A little blood soaked hope is not always a bad thing.

myndfuneral.bandcamp.com