Cloudboy announce

Down at the End of the Garden

20th anniversary Aotearoa tour!

On Record Store Day 2023, Dunedin’s dream pop originators, Cloudboy, released their remastered, revered 2001 album, ‘Down at the End of the Garden’ on vinyl for the first time, with the limited edition selling out nationwide.

Now fans will be able to experience the full glory of Down at the End of the Garden performed live throughout Aotearoa, in intimate seated venues, enveloped by Cloudboy’s master musicianship and a densely-textured, immersive full-length film.

Called a “wildly ambitious record...fearless and far-reaching” by RNZ’s Tony Stamp, Down at the End of the Garden is an album that easily leapt into Aotearoa’s ‘classic album’ list, featuring band members Craig Monk, Jo Contag, Demarnia Lloyd and Heath Te Au. Jo said, “The main aim of Cloudboy was to frame Demarnia's songs and compelling voice in unusual and evocative ways”, and intricate musical arrangements set to a pop sensibility sailed this record into the collections of the nation.

Cloudboy’s touring band is comprised of Demarnia Lloyd (vocals), Craig Monk (violin, guitar, synth), Johannes Contag (guitar, flute, bass), original drummer Heath Te Au, backing tracks and John White (violin, backing vocals); live visuals created by Ōtautahi Christchurch-based photographer/film-maker Stuart Lloyd-Harris.

Don’t miss experiencing this incredible classic album live!

PRAISE FOR DOWN AT THE END OF THE GARDEN

"Imaginative pop of just-so poise with a hint of darkness..." - Russell Baillie, NZ Herald

“Every so often an album is reissued that’s especially deserving.” - Tony Stamp, RNZ

"Stubbornly individual and curiously beautiful; and yet this is a pop album" - Nick Bollinger, NZ Listener

“A startlingly original avant-pop album. Nothing like this has ever appeared from our enchanted isles." - Noel Meek, Loop

"An eclectic slice of brilliance that will be treasured by those that possess it" - John Taite, Real Groove

CLOUDBOY LIVE REVIEWS

"Brilliant" - Shayne P. Carter

"An evening of surreal beauty, humour and darkness lying somewhere in the murky moors between theatre, performance art and musical concert…Many may ask why Cloudboy were cooped up in a venue the size of BATS when there were people turned away at the door every night and their sound is potentially stadium-filling…Utterly unmissable a second time." - Noel Meek, Loop

“Unbelievable. I haven't seen anything this good in this country for a long time. so much to watch and hear and reel from...movies...costumes...weird people scampering across the stage with bowed shoulders...a saxophonist....a backing chorus... Demarnia was beyond compare." - Roi Colbert

"Drawing from pulsy Krautrock, classical, dance, European folk music and anything but the blues - it was rich and rewarding, seductive and complete...harking back to the art-band mischief of the late 70s with the sound of the new century - think Mental Notes-era Split Enz filtered through Spiritualized - yes boys and girls, it's the return of theatrical rock!" - Cam, NZ Pop List

“Bathed in a soft green and incense, Cloudboy hold me captive in their garden of enchantment...the mood and emotion of their music and the theatrics slipped tastefully hand in hand, creating a complete and enchanting show" - The Knave, The Package

Cloudboy Biography:

Formed in 1995, Cloudboy — a creative tangent of select members culled from nineties’ electro-pop cult group Mink — write and perform lushly orchestrated dream pop of stunning beauty and originality. Demarnia sings, writes, sequences and samples; Johannes records, mixes and plays guitar, flute and synth FX; Craig writes orchestral arrangements and plays guitar, violin and electric piano; Heath Te Au plays drums. The result of their carefully curated lineups was an intimate, fragile vocal blended with electro-acoustic instruments, synthetic soundscapes and amplified rhythms.

"The main aim of Cloudboy was to frame Demarnia's songs and intimate voice in compelling, unusual and evocative ways. Broadcast-quality home recording was still quite new then, and one of our main instruments was the sampler; digital technology had only just become affordable to poor student musicians. Recording the album was like being in a huge playground of sonic possibilities, putting together some really unique combinations to create the lushest soundscapes we could, and trying to avoid any established rock or dance styles." — Johannes Contag

The band’s first full length release, ‘Down at the End of the Garden’, originally released on CD in April 2001 through Arclife and Loop, is a concept album tour-de-force evoking a technicolor netherworld of epic proportions. A long time in “the works” it was recorded in Dunedin and Wellington during 1997-2001. This Creative New Zealand funded album is an organic work of art that thrived in the digital domain.

On ‘Down at the End of the Garden’, Demarnia’s songs are bound together by an instrumentation ranging from the exotic (tablas, whistle, prayer bells) to the familiar (drums, bass, guitar, organ) and the traditional (violin, double bass, flute, accordion, vibraphone), with the arrangements glued together by cutting-edge soundscapes and crackling yesteryear sample loops.

"It is to me a very full album - when I hear the songs the musicianship of the band really stands out to me, and the layers, complexities, the vocal depths (added by John and Jef Mitchell) it feels like a world is hidden inside it." — Demarnia Lloyd

‘Down at the End of the Garden’ was rereleased via Flying Nun Records on Saturday 22nd April [Record Store Day] on limited edition transparent blue vinyl, and standard black vinyl. Pre-orders of ‘Down at the End of the Garden’ were not be available; sold “first in first served” at local record stores, the album sold out of available copies on that day.

Outside of Cloudboy, Demarnia Lloyd has released two solo mini-albums, Trace (2000) and Set Upon a Curve (2002). In 2009, she performed Dimmer’s ‘Degrees of Existence’ at the Silver Scroll Awards in Christchurch Town Hall with a choir (https://youtu.be/RwcJFzNePTs?si=x1mql6w6m4O0LZlh). Furthermore, in 2019, Demarnia composed the instrumental music for the Footnote/Choreo Codance collaboration Nobody Hears the Axe Fall and in 2020, she sang on a track on ‘Caucus’ by Olumpus and collaborated on the multidisciplinary Erewhon Project, which explores Samuel Butler’s 1872 utopian novel Erewhon: Over the Range. In 2022 she contributed a piece to Woodenhead Reimagined, a tribute album to the 2003 movie’s original soundtrack.

Johannes Contag has released the album Autumn as guitarist and producer of The Golden Awesome and toured the US twice with this band, which has been active since 2009. In 2013 and 2016 respectively, he wrote live orchestral accompaniments to classic silent films, The Crowd and Variety, which were presented as festival highlights in those years’ NZ International Film Festivals, and the soundtrack of the former was included on the film’s Masters of Cinema rerelease. In 2020, he joined Bill Direen and Mark Williams in the release of Ferocious, an album and series of live shows of semi-improvised noise rock. This was predated by another band with Mark Williams and Jeff Henderson in the late 2000s, the improv lo-fi drone rock band Bad Statistics, which released two albums - the vinyl Staticon on Belgian label Kraak and the CD release of Lucky Town Gone on Pseudoarcana. Johannes has also released an album with Jay Clarkson in 2007, Over the Mountain.

Craig Monk credits studying North Indian classical music in the UK in the early 2010s, and playing the Heka reunion gig - which restarted music at The Crown Hotel in Ōtepoti Dunedin in 2010 - with reigniting his own love of performing music. Moving home to Ōtepoti in 2015, he re-joined the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra as well as Heka, joined the Broken Heartbreakers and the Lara Rose band, collaborated with Tall Folk, John White, Phil Davison, John Gibson and dancer Matthew Smith, formed Lars Von Trio (with long-time collaborator Tenzin Mullin, and Greg Cairns) and currently OMMU (with Tenzin and Jeff Harford). He enjoys a busy music life of performing, instrument teaching, music education, writing, and occasional activism.

Susie Says!

Aotearoa New Zealand