cLOUDDEAD

A DISEMBODIED VOICE with a slight hint of helium in it intoning the words "I taught myself to survive a four storey fall wearing a space suit and a dead Englishman's socks" will not be everyone's first idea of the future of hip hop. But listen carefully to the record on which this sentence occurs - the eponymous debut by Bay Area-based trio cLOUDDEAD - and you'll get the same thrilling sense of a new world opening up that the first LL Cool J album or A Tribe Called Quest's Midnight Marauders gave to people.