What happens when you take the tourmate of Chance The Rapper, and give him a computer? Sweater Beats and his fluent Cloud City EP happen.
In terms of the future bass genre, this release is one of the most forward-thinking and genre-breaking things to come out of this year. There are hints of influence from Flume on this EP but Sweater Beats really comes into his own and pulls off a captivating collection of songs. In future bass, some of the more common bpm’s you see are 140 or 160. However, Sweater Beats innovates by having 2 tracks at the 123-124 BPM range. However this isn’t the first time he had made future bass at a house bpm. 
The title track of the EP is probably my favorite of the four songs. It so wonderfully and elegantly encapsulates what it is I love about future bass. The next track called “Rain Dance” makes clever use of its samples and its bpm to create a future bass song with the groove and rhythm of house. I’ve been bringing up bpm a lot in this article, and I want to stress how significant it is that Sweater Beats is making these sort of songs at bpm’s more traditionally reserved for house music. He could have played it safe and arguably made some pretty amazing music at more common tempo but instead he made a far more memorable EP. To back up this point, “Dark Matter” is a soulful song creating emphasis on the lyrics rather than a big climax while containing R&B influences and touching vocals from a l l i e. Rounding off the EP is the tune “Golden Sun”, which in some ways feels like a more mellowed out and relaxed Lido song. The focus of the song is its piano and the simple yet mysterious melody it plays.
Cloud City pushes future bass so far forward you’ll need a time machine just to hear it.
