Artist Detailed Info: The Cloudrunner

The CloudRunner is a musical project by British composer Andrew
Feehan. Starting in the summer of 2009 spanning the genres of
Orchestral Metal, Death Metal and Hard Rock. So far there have been 9
releases; 5 full lengths albums, 1 E.P, and remix & b-side album with
a 6th album entitled “To Those Bound To The End” to be released in
January 2012.

Starting as a instrumental metal project under the moniker of “Earth
Story” in 2008 Andy started planning a departure from his currently
musical dwells of instrumental electronic metal and began the first
album entitled “The Pendulum”. The first installment in an 8 album
story revolving around a story of loss, redemption and realization.
The album was originally planned to be an 100% solo album but during
the process of creating the 22 song double album Andy decided to
enlist the help of his talented friends from past bands Jack Sherriff,
James Foale & Daniel Argent. Having all vocal styles covered for what
Andy wanted to create they set upon completing the album, the whole
album is still has the longest duration period from the beginning of
the project until the competition taking 10 months to complete.

After the completion of “The Pendulum” Andy took two months off to
begin assembling a live band to play songs off ‘The Pendulum’ live,
the band featured a culmination of past bands “Strings of Fire”,
“Primagen” and “Dreams In The Witching House”, the band went on to do
select live shows through until September 2011. The band line up was
Dan Argent (Lead Growled Vocals), Jack Sherriff (Lead Clean Vocals &
Guitar), Mark Lizzimore (Bass), James Foale (Backing Vocals,
Electronic Support and Drums) and Andy (Backing Vocals & Lead Guitar)
.

In July 2010 he began work on what is still his favorite album “Our
Scarlet Sky”. Toning down the black/death metal vibes and in general
the huge variation between songs of “The Pendulum”, “Our Scarlet Sky”
saw a more Hard Rock styling to the music combining the orchestral
prowess of Scandinavian metal and the classic metal stylings of Iron
Maiden & Metallica. Vocally Dan whose ferocious vocals took the for
front on the debut album were scaled back to 2 songs and Jack & James
took centre stage. The album was completed in October 2010 featuring
10 songs, 3 of being part of a 23 minute long song called “Blood Sun”,
which is the longest song by The CloudRunner to date.

After the completion of his second album Andy began work on a double
album, which ended up being split into one album and one e.p completed
either side of his 4 month trip to the Far East. “Origin” being the
first of the completed new releases was another 9 song album, but this
time after the more commercial sound of “Our Scarlet Sky” a more death
metal approach was taken with shorter songs and more emphasis on
heaviness throughout the album was recognizable after hearing such
songs which become live favorites such as “Hellbound Ship” and “Graves
Of Our Gods”. This album also featured the largest logic files so far,
with some songs having close to 40 tracks to mix down. This album was
also the first two feature Andy’s younger brother Nick who provided
vocals for “From the Obsidian”. The album was completed and put online
on the 16th Decemeber 2010. An album for Christmas dinner, it was not.

Once Andy returned to England after being out of the country for 4
months he began to finish what was originally the second disc of the
double album to accompany “Origin”, whilst being away Andy changed his
mind on many of the songs that he had written and scaled the 9 written
songs down to 5 and what was left became the “This World Ends With
You” E.P. The title track was the first song to be written by someone
else aside from Andy as the live band wrote the majority of it whilst
rehearsing for there winter show. Carrying on from the style of “Our
Scarlet Sky” the EP showed an even less more heavy metal side and was
much closer to Hard Rock. The EP was recorded in April-May 2011.

Now that “The CloudRunner” had started getting some minor coverage on
youtube, the massive improvement in production value between the first
and second album which still improved with every album and due to the
live band still playing a lot of material from the first album Andy
decided to completely re-record a selection of songs from “The
Pendulum”. Using most of the original vocals the project took the
month of June to complete”. The songs that appeared now included
expanded orchestral tracks and rearrangements for the longer songs.

Now that all the loose ends had been tied up to material written in
2010 Andy started a fresh chapter of the “The CloudRunner” which for
the first time would incorporate writing new material with other
musicians for the purpose of a new album or in some cases using riffs
provided by Jack to create the new album “Legion”. Finding a happy
medium inbetween the old stylings of “Born Again Dead” and the come
down and emotions of being back from abroad and back to reality and
finding a job in a country in financial turmoil, the songs became a
balance of the heaviest album so far mixed with the emotional ballad
style of a fresh sound for the project.

Legion was also used as an experiment to begin collaborating with
vocalists from all over the world, which were found on youtube. For
“Legion” there were four guest vocalists, Joni Sade from the band
“Mysore”, Juan “The Beast” Rodriguez who is a very popular rock/metal
singer from youtube, Uri Neito of “Sargon” fame and a teacher at the
Stanford Musical University in New York and Dan Yetman a metal singer
from youtube.

The process for legion from start to finish took from May – Sept 2010,
featuring 12 songs all centered around the themes of dreams, religion
and lose. The album has so far had the most downloads online showing
the projects beginning to grow online, as the original intention of
“The CloudRunner” was just to write some songs for friends to listen
to it has already exceeded expectations”.

In September 2011 the live band was put on hold as Dan has moved to
Canada and James has decided he cannot offer the time to the live band
anymore, currently Andy is seeking a new drummer to take over.

For the future the new album is currently underway with a hopeful
release of January 2012. The album entitled “To Those Bound To The
End” will be the most ambitious album so far, spanning nearly two full
CDs and featuring 23 vocalists from all corners of the world the album
will surely be an interesting experiment. Stylistically the album is
in a similar vein to “Our Scarlet Sky” expect with a more power/folk
metal influence, the heavier songs are still present but more based in
orchestral power rather than death metal.

All albums are available for free download from;
www.youtube.com/emeishanmusic
little raven records

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