Múm

Go Go Smear the Poison Ivy

(Fat Cat, 2007)

Despite the seemingly ever shifting line-up and specific musical avenue that múm seeks to occupy, it’s able to sustain an ever expanding international following. But that’s the power of intelligent music (not intelligent dance music). Like every other band this millennium, múm defies categorization, incorporating seemingly unmusical elements and instruments into the complex arrangements of its songs. What this album does that past efforts have not, is to smooth out the electronic elements and create a more generally palatable and understated disc. The recent and populist reverence lent to Astor Piazzolla and his bandoneon is found on “A Little Bit, Sometimes,” but also recalls pleasant enough childhood moments. The one throw back presents itself in the form of “Dancing Behind My Eyelids,” which possesses enough heavy handed drum programming to please any devout fan of electronic musics. Most of this offering, though, sounds less paranoid than “Eyelids” and in fact often sounds almost organic, save for the fact that the instrumentation is of course anything but that. The lead off track blossoms with a light melody and the pleasing tones of Eastern styled percussion. Die-hards rejoice, skeptics may nitpick, but there’s enough creative forethought on Go Go Smear the Poison Ivy to make the album an appropriate, more gentle and mature re-working of a style that is definitively múm.

Daedelus

Of Snowdonia

(Plug Research, 2004)

The first time most heard of Daedelus was as a result of the Mush release The Weather. That initial exposure to bizarre beats, put together from myriad sources including kids’ songs and toy instruments, coupled with the rantings of Busdriver and Radioinactive, endeared listeners to the producer. Ignorant of his previous solo work, Invention (2002), Of Snowdonia is a welcome profile raiser.

Apparently, Snowdon is a mountain range in the north of Wales, where the highest point on the island can be found. Now, the invocation of such an area, one that possesses so much serene, natural beauty is obfuscating. If this were a Bert Jansch record or even a hillbilly record with slow and subtle bluegrass melodies tinged with pre-war blues, the reference would be understood, but electronic music and nature, in most minds, do not invoke one another. Not to say that this record lacks organic melodies, it does not. The melodies on “Taking Wing” or “Telling Meaning” are evidence of that. But tracks like “Overdressed” or “Pocket Watch Pulse” are rife with technology. Even the echo on the drum featured in the first track, “Snowed In”, is not a window to nature, but a comment upon the techniques utilized today in electronic music wizardry and studio mastery.

An exceptional effort though. Some may want to compare Daedelus with Scott Herren, but that’s simply unfair. While the two work roughly in the same medium, the results that they both produce are drastically different. Nor is El-P, another producer garnering much attention of late, an apt colleague. Daedelus has no artistic peers, only colleagues.