Mike Clouds, born Nathaniel Deloach, in Portland, Maine in 1977 was destined to be musically inclined. Growing up on Portland’s Munjoy Hill surrounded by a large, loud, and boisterous family he learned early on how singing, dancing or just being entertaining went a long way to solidifying his place in the family. As he reached his early formative years, he learned about the passion his cousin Dan, AKA DJ Danski, had for Hip Hop culture and it’s many ways of expression. When he realized how pure and enlightening it was to be involved in the creation of the culture, Mike Clouds was hooked. Entering his early 20′s with a steadily growing understanding of life’s many ups and downs, Mike Clouds turned his creativity to writing rhymes and performing at the various open mic Hip Hop sessions the local Portland clubs offered. One such club, the Stone Coast brewing Company was the veritable breeding ground of the local Hip Hop scene, with it’s weekly open mic’s hosted by among others, Milled Pavements founder, DJ Moshe. It was here at the weekly open mic’s that he met up with Aaron Libby AKA A-frame, and quickly embarked on collaborating future ideas and sounds that would embody three albums produced by Golden Touch and Milled Pavement Records. During this productively ambitious time, Mike Clouds turned his attention to the details of making a collage of sounds and samples fit together to become a mood driven, thought inducing body of work. His follow up albums to the A-Frame voiced lyrical diatribes were maturing into deep and sometimes sinister audio collages. With the help of DJ Moshe and the Milled Pavement Records stable of MC’s, Mike Clouds went on to produce five solo and collaborative albums, and earned production credits on another several dozen between the years 2006-2010. 2014 sees Mike Clouds re-emerge after a four year public-hiatus to throw his flat-brim into the Trap and Bass Music ring. “Apollo’s Stamina” is the coded language for Clouds’ own ego re-emerging into the public eye with a revitalized energy for music and performance. The sun goes down, the Clouds come out. A cycle begins anew. The period spent re-organizing his personal life and concentrating on giving his children a promising start has informed the serious conviction Clouds brings to this fresh entry to his catalogue. Though closely identified with the Sun, the Roman god Apollo is also the symbolic embodiment of Music, Poetry, and the Protection of the young- all fitting metaphors for Mike Clouds’ re-emergence. “Apollo’s Stamina” can almost be divided into two groups of songs: one series in danceable Trap-derived undulations, while the other half could almost be referred to as Downtempo or Trip-hop, were it not for the the ever-present 32nd-note hi-hats and tongue-in-cheek Southern-fried vocal samples. Mike Clouds has shared the stage with Dj Shadow, K-the-I???, Mr Lif, Akrobatik, Dj Vadim (Russia), Uncommon Nasa, Yarah Bravo, James Reindeer (UK), Nomar Slevik, Blurum 13 and many more spanning his native New England, and across the Atlantic touring with Milled Pavement Records cohorts Brzowski+Moshe in April/May of 2014. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.