Zitat:Here”™s one for fans of slick synth cheese. And rock. And classical. And jazz skronk. Blippy electro? Fusion. In fact no matter what your fave genre may happen to be there”™s probably ten consecutive seconds of music somewhere on Umlaut”™s self titled record that you might very well enjoy. The Melbourne based group featuring reedsman Bär McKinnon of Mr. Bungle fame does bare a remarkable sonic likeness to his previous band, employing many of the same sounds that informed Bungle”™s later work, and to this end it is revealing just how great his contribution must have been to their influential body of work.
It”™s all here – dark ambience, metal guitars, shiny pop, cartoonish diversions, exotica, even Mike Patton, whose contributions to the track Atlas Face do little to dispel the creeping sense that somewhere, be it on a Bungle or perhaps Fantomas record, you have heard this piece of music.
For as many stylistic hairpin turns as this record manages there is for the listener an over-arching sense of nostalgia (and I write this as a conscientious consumer of music who acknowledges that Mike Patton is not God and like everyone drops the occasional clanger). While some of the hairier moments evoke Naked City, and the more whimsical ones Zappa, it”™s gotta be said that much of this record sounds like Bungle in a playful mood. I will leave it to the reader to decide whether this is a good or bad thing.
Of course it”™s not possible to blend so many disparate timbres and aesthetics into an album-length program without a lot of it seeming to merge into an indistinct field of nonsense, and Bär must be commended for making this album relatively cogent.
Some songs do approach attempting to be memorable, with snappy chorus”™ and parts that repeat rather than an endlessly developing melange of sound. Work Truck kicks off with some metal riffing before busting into a cutesy little chugging riff topped with the sunny hook “I wanna give you a ride in my work truck/Because I”™ve got it for the weekend”; a cartoonish pitch-shifted voice interjects every now and then like the bastard child of Daffy Duck and Flava Flav, while the song occasionally drifts back and forth from metal chunk to organ sleaze.
Highlight Chill Pill advises “Just chill the fuck out, everything”™s gonna be alright” atop a bed of echo-laden guitars. In all it”™s a tasty diversion through the wide gamut of music with plenty of ridiculous ear candy along the way, recommended for those who bore easliy or fans of you-know-who.