Brock van Wey — White clouds drift on and on. Story behind the album

“The naked emotion of Brock van Wey’s oeuvre has been almost uncomfortable to listen to”—wrote the Resident Advisor magazine when the White clouds drift on and on album became one of the twenty best records of 2009. Reviewers, who were taken by surprise by the overwhelming background sounds and chants of African fields, thanked Stephen Hitchell, the owner of the Echospace label in Detroit. And it wasn’t for the fact that he released the album but rather for its additional disc of variations :-)

Brock van Wey

Once Steve wrote a letter to van Wey to thank him for his music—for several years Van Wey had been working on some sad dub techno but was openly moving towards multi-layered ambient. He’d already started to secretly interweave voices that later became his thing. During their correspondence, they realised that they were very like-minded guys. Echospace was even ready to sign ambient music that could be very different from the usual as long as it was a.) a cohesive album, and b.) touched the listeners’ heart.