Cloud One, a disco outfit restricted to studio work, launched its career in 1976 through the striking "Atmosphere Strut." The underground disco track drifts in a state of bliss and loops a female vocal refrain declaring "We're gonna fly/Fly away." What distinguished the track amid its contemporaries was the untamed synthesizer passage crafted by Patrick Adams, who produced and arranged the material while steering the project, much as he did with numerous fleeting disco ensembles that faded quickly from view. The nine-minute release marked the first output on P&P, the initial imprint among several small labels operated by Adams and his associate Peter Brown.
Additional Cloud One singles appeared on P&P-related imprints including Queen Constance, Golden Flamingo, Heavenly Star, and Sound of New York during the closing years of the 1970s. The 1976 Atmosphere Strut LP gathered selected 12" recordings from the act, among them a seven-minute version of the swirling Adams favorite "Disco Juice." Funky Disco Tracks of Cloud One, issued as an EP in 1978, preceded the second album Happy Music, which surfaced in 1979. "Patti Duke" stands as another noteworthy Cloud One recording, a spacious cut built around eccentric Moog flourishes and layers of hand percussion that, at higher speed, would evoke one of the most propulsive go-go numbers committed to tape.
Fortunately, Cloud One's catalog has remained reasonably accessible. Unidisc brought Atmosphere Strut to compact disc in 1996, and M.I.L. Multimedia followed with The Best of Cloud One in 1998. The British Counterpoint label further aided collectors seeking material from P&P and its subsidiaries by issuing the Disco Juice compilation in 1997, with a second volume arriving in 2002; four Cloud One tracks appear across the pair of collections.
