Unknown Mortal Orchestra… Known quantity
EPs round-up: Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Ducktails, Autechre
Published on November 14th, 2013 | Jonny Abrams
New EPs: three of ’em. Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Ducktails and Autechre, since you ask. That’s a good bunch.
Let’s review ’em.
Unknown Mortal Orchestra – Blue Record EP
Here at Rocksucker we are wont to end interviews by asking acts which have been their favourite albums of the year; this year, Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s II album has been comfortably the most frequently mentioned.
Quite right, too, and new life is breathed ever so softly into three particular LP highlights – namely “Swim and Sleep (Like a Shark)”, “Faded in the Morning” and “So Good at Being in Trouble” – by their presence on Blue Record EP as sweetly delicate/delicately sweet acoustic run-throughs.
In addition to these are covers of The Dirty Projectors’ “Swing Lo Magellan” and Beck’s “Puttin’ It Down”, the latter briefly rendered alien with a well-judged spot of pitch-meddling.
One for the fans, amongst whom you should count yourselves.
Blue Record is out now on Jagjaguwar.
Rocksucker says: Three and a Half Quails out of Five!
Ducktails – Wish Hotel EP
More of the golden-syrup-glowing psych-pop that made this year’s The Flower Lane album so satisfying.
“Tie-Dye” sounds distinctly Bravecaptain-like, indeed Matt Mondanile sings rather like Martin Carr (this is resoundingly a good thing, in case you’re unsure).
The title track all luxurious major 7th chords and deceptively propulsive drums, “Jazz” glowing keys and psychedelic sea shanty rhythm, the instrumental “Naïve” pangs of warm felty synth and lovely loungey, you know, ‘vibes’.
Wish Hotel EP is out now on Domino.
Rocksucker says: Three and a Half Quails out of Five!
Autechre – L-Event EP
Continuing in much the same outrageously inscrutable vein as this year’s Exai LP, L-Event EP kicks off with “tac Lacora” gurgling, squelching, zapping, fizzing, rumbling, grumbling, glitching and bleeping along like some misshapen snowball with loose live wires sticking out of it, sparking hither and thither.
Another classic Autechre singalong for all the family, then.
One of the things we love most about Autechre is that they make us write sentences like the snowball one above.
“Osla for n”, for instance, kind of sounds like you’re being attacked by a short-circuiting robot dog. This writer burst out laughing, in a good way, at how jarring it is.
“newbound” is the first to display any kind of melodic properties about its synths, albeit amidst a tumult of lasers and deep pounds of what may once have been rhythm, or may constitute it in some far-off galaxy.
Somewhat perversely, a sound as uncompromising as Autechre’s has become works better in the long haul of an album. Otherwise it just feels like a mere taster of a parallel universe.
Still, good old Autechre and their hallucination-inducing, superdifficult electronica.
L-Event is out now on Warp.
BUY: L-Event EP on iTunes or on Amazon.
Rocksucker says: Three Quails out of Five!
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About the Author
Jonny Abrams Editor of Rocksucker and the website's founder, Jonny is passionate about the music he listens to, both good and bad, as well as interviewing his favourite musicians.
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