Knock knock.
Who's there?
cLOUDDEAD.
cLOUDDEAD who?

That's the question, but few have the same answer. The group got the name from the punchline to the kind of nonsensical joke every kid sister tells. cLOUDDEAD (aka rappers Odd Nosdam, Why? and Dose One), are part of that tinderbox of web-board flamewars, the Anticon collective. The appearance of a crew of white MCs and an album called Music for the Advancement of Hip-Hop was bound to stir controversy. Were they ambitious backpackers or hyped-up marketeers? Well, regardless of the beef between Sole and former Company Flow head El-P, or the larger battle about whether Anticon's projects are hip-hop at all, they're without a doubt a rising power.

cLOUDDEAD's first album, which collects the 10-inches they released from 1998 to 2000, fits this picture perfectly. "apt.A" greets with a warm, choral hum, clearly in the Boards of Canada neighborhood. The silence is broken by a dull drum loop and spiral synths, a mix that serves as a prelude to Dose One's verse. Too many heads can't get past his nasal delivery, which sounds like he's been boning too many thug harmonies. Combine his chatter with the washed-out, repetitious flow of the music and the effect can be narcotic. In a recent interview, Dose One was quoted saying the album was "gonna be a banger," but the mastering's too dirty for any sound to rattle speakers. Considering the album was made on a Dr. Sample, a Radio Shack mic and an eight-track, though, the overall effect is pretty fresh.

Dose One and Why? drop prose completely devoid of traditional hip-hop imagery. Their verses are scrapbook pages of memories and observations, packed dense with adjectives and short on linking phrases. Sometimes their impressionist flourishes are simply beautiful, like, "I wonder what my mother looked like pregnant/ I've classified water damage as art/ Ruining things/ Trilobyte out on the town/ Painting things in accordance with my weird ordinance/ My style is glass cutter/ Delicate/ Intense/ Shooting out the moonlights with my tongue depression in a vacuum." Other times, their poetical brushes overlap and muddy the canvas. Countless in-group references seem the product of late-night blunted gatherings, until you catch the lyrics written out in the liner notes. If these words are pre-written, and not freestyle, then at times these guys are trying too hard to be all artfully abstract.

cLOUDDEAD's 74 minutes bring surprises. The most startling is the 11-minute suite "Jimmy Breeze," which begins with a stupid skit and rapid-fire conga pattering, burbles up an 8-bit Nintendo sample, and then features lyrical protocol on how to survive a four-story fall. The vocals fade, a deep bassline drifts in, and sampled drum fills roll out a jam. Just as you expect DJ Shadow to appear, wondering "What does my soul look like?," the MCs sing out a gospel groove, voices straining for that high pitch. The second track of the suite, an elegy for a friend who killed himself in art school, blazes with regret, jaded irony and critique: "We seem to be sinking deeper into a vat of honey glaze/ Shall we live or shall we laminate ourselves into a standard appetizing position?/ At school this quarter/ All the supply lists call for Reynold's wrap and contact paper.../ Am I here to start a dead butterfly collection?/ But friends: We've no longer a need for glitzy masters/ Who paint gold-leaf holy babies in the backs of cathedrals." Waves of organ reverence signal the end of the piece.

To accuse these moments of being interludes between the vocal tracks is to miss the point. Hazy shoegazed ambience and instrumentals full of slow, dusty beats comprise a huge portion of this album. Soulful rhythms will disappear entirely in the middle of a track, only to be replaced by monk-like chanting or funky breaks. Every time you try and grasp what's going on, the focal point shifts, a testament to cLOUDDEAD's nebulous aesthetic. Yet the crucial hip-hop signifiers are present: verse trading, shout-outs, a personal vocabulary full of slang hipsterisms. If you're in the mood to be on some experimental shit, check this out. Just don't jump on the played-out debate and try to define the group by what they're not. Otherwise, they've played the joke on you.

-Christopher Dare