Worth Knowing, Worth Going offers a spotlight on emerging artists poised to make waves in and around Richmond. This time we spoke with Cloud M, a.k.a. Cloud Myers, a pillar of the local vinyl collecting community thanks to their day job at Deep Groove Records.

When Myers is not slinging wax, the 2014 graduate of Mills E. Godwin High School is recording thoughtfully layered, instrumental explorations. They will celebrate the cassette tape release of their latest experimental ambient album “Cazimi” on Sunday, Dec. 22 at Kindred Spirit Brewing Satellite on Ownby Lane.

Style Weekly: What were your early experiences playing music?

Cloud M: My folks got me guitar lessons in early high school, and I took lessons pretty much from freshman to senior year. I was never really in band or anything, so the way I started playing guitar was [that] I had a very, very cool guitar teacher. His name is Clifton McDaniel. He still lives in Richmond, and he plays in a band called the Moonbees. He was pretty much down to teach me whatever I wanted to learn, and the style I ended up playing — I wanted it to sound complete by itself, because I didn’t really have many friends growing up.

It’s the same kind of music I was listening to … I grew up in the West End, and a lot of music I liked was a bit more alternative or experimental, and that not many folks were listening to the same stuff I was. So I feel like the way I started to play and write songs implemented a playing style that made it sound full by itself — a lot of fingerpicking and open tuning. I didn’t even really play with other people, probably, until I was in college.

How did you approach building the layers we hear on “Cazimi”?

I use a lot of looper pedal … I was definitely more interested in structured songwriting at a point, but I’m like, “Oh, you can play different melodies over another melody and it’ll sound different.” Growing up, I was definitely interested in doing tiny bits of phone recordings and playing over it. And then I eventually got a looper pedal, which is the exact same one I still use. Most of that stuff is just having simple things on a loop and then coming up with chords or other fingerpicking patterns to play over it.

Your breadth of musical knowledge is so well known to Deep Groove’s clientele. Which artists helped shape the direction your own music has taken?

I definitely reference a lot of the Jim O’Rourke records that came out on [Chicago record label] Drag City. He did a few pop records where he does a lot of fingerpicking on them. But he is referencing other musicians I wasn’t aware of at the time, especially John Fahey, who I eventually became obsessed with as well. And then jazz musicians like Burt Bacharach, or multiple jazz guitarists like Gábor Szabó. But a lot of it started from those Jim O’Rourke records. I was also really into the band Deerhunter at the time — that wall of sound, dreamy aesthetic. Also stuff like the Cocteau Twins… Those records I still own and love listening to, but I would definitely say Jim O’Rourke was a huge influence.

Are there any shows that you’ve played so far that felt especially meaningful?

Probably the first tour I went on with my band, Elastic Medium. We do free improvisation, kind of noise music. I guess you could call it free jazz, but the point of the band early on was to play instruments we weren’t necessarily comfortable with playing. I took a viola with me on tour. I’m totally not adept at playing, but it’s a fun group, because you take what you’ve learned about, say, guitar playing [and ask] “How do I implement it into this instrument I’m not as familiar with?” So, you know, hooking up to effect pedals and even plucking it and using it as a percussive instrument — that kind of thing. But it was interesting being in different places, not just in Richmond, and seeing crowds of folks who were actually into what we were doing; usually folks who were much older than us, and also folks who had been around doing similar things.

We opened for Susan Alcorn, a slide steel guitar player, and she is, I would consider, a legend. She’s literally played with Johnny Paycheck, and even artists like Joe McPhee and a lot of free jazz players, and she was very receptive to what we were doing. That was just very cool.

It’s nice, because it’s more like an exercise challenge. We’re improvising. It’s like, “How do I react to this?” We pretty much don’t rehearse; versus, for my solo shows, it’s fairly structured. There is space to do different things, but there is definitely more of a structure to the pieces I’m doing [solo]. I find it to be, at least in my mind, much less abrasive, and honestly, probably pretty soothing at times.

The structure of “Cazimi” is one thing that’s so enchanting about it — how the two tracks with vocals are bookended by pairs of instrumentals. How did you arrive at that sequencing? 

It was almost by accident, because the two tracks in the middle actually have been finished for about, I would say, a year and a half at least. I did those with my friend Laura [Marina]. Laura is extremely talented — does kind of noise, drone music under the name Piled. She was also the front woman of a band called Faucet, and they’re much more like a noise rock, post-hardcore, very punk-oriented band where she is not doing clean vocals. She’s very much screaming and doing extreme sounds, but she’s a fantastic singer… We did those two songs together, and she moved to Los Angeles, and then I was kind of stuck, being like, “I don’t know what to do with some of these other songs I want to finish…”

I eventually hit up my friend Jon [Kassalow], who records at the studio S.A.N.S. My band, Elastic Medium, has played a show there. I’ve played a solo set there before. He records so many different Richmond bands — every genre. It was kind of a no-brainer to hit him up for recording. The rest of the tracks, I had pretty much decided, would be much more instrumental and then [I would] have the two vocal tracks be a break in the middle of the record to give you something different and then bring you back down to something more instrumental.

What are you especially looking forward to about the “Cazimi” release show?

It’s in a space I haven’t been to yet, at Kindred Spirit [Satellite]. Also, the event series, Sunday Soundtracks, is fairly new. Because I’ve been in Richmond for so long, it is refreshing to see a space that I’m not as familiar with implementing a new scene of music or a new show series that I’m not familiar with. Because I do feel like, for a town as small as it is, things can remain stagnant. So it is refreshing to see people like Robert [Salsbury] come up with these new series of shows and booking artists who don’t get booked as frequently.

What else is on the horizon that we should keep an eye out for?

A big reason I did this tape is so that I could move on from these songs I’ve been working on literally since high school — to have a place [where] they’re stored and I can focus on creating something different … I’ve been working on mostly guitar-less music. More stuff on my iPad, playing with different instruments and just trying to explore more.

Cloud M will perform at Kindred Spirit Satellite at 1626 Ownby Lane on Sunday, Dec. 22 as part of the Sunday Soundtracks series. Syncretist and Daniel D will also perform. Music starts at 4 p.m. and ends at 7 p.m. For more information, visit kindredspiritbrewing.com. To hear and purchase “Cazimi,” visit cloudm.bandcamp.com.