Everything is Always The Same
Intelligent Life makes its powerful debut with this genre-defying album. Ultimately unclassifiable and obsessively listenable, it is an ephemera of sound that defuse boundaries. A structural philosophy of experimental contrabass underscores the ambient, down-tempo and avant-garde components, which fluidly superimpose with the electronica. While the contrabass is clearly a foundational element, it serves more as a point of departure than a defining sonic envelope. Düngfelder & Brown take their disparate experiences and talents to attack convention. Alive with vivid colors they give the meditative music a real edge with the unexpected. It’s full of an idiosyncratic energy not found on most experimental albums. A brilliant debut.
Tracklisting:
- Everything Is Always The Same
- Shelter In Place
- Large Chunks Of Meaning
- Metaphors
- Not Even The Past Is Done
- Over Thirty Seconds
- Saturn Returns
- If No One Else
- Out Of The Dawn
- Until A Distance Appears
- For Solitude
- Somewhere You Know Nothing About
Intelligent Life
Intelligent Life is Jeff Düngfelder & Mike Brown. Jeff Düngfelder (aka Ümlaut), is an experimental sound artist and composer based in Queens, New York. The thematic concepts distinguishing his work are absence and silence, the ineffable exchange between viewer and image, and random moments of stillness within a landscape in flux. The listener is set out on a richly layered journey into the unknown. Jeff has released records on labels such as on Audiobulb and Carpe Sonum Records. This is his first collaborative release. An accomplished musician on the electric and double bass, Mike Brown has explored everything from rock to jazz to classical to country. His specialties include “New/ Avant Garde” and “extended techniques.” Mike is the front man of May the Bridges I Burn Light the Way. He can be heard on soundtracks by Ken Burns; is one half of the Brown-Jewell duo; and is a member of other groups, including Kotorino, Wheelchair Sports Camp, Keva, Charles Atlas, Now Over Ever, The Kerosene Ensemble, and Fingerprint.
ReviewsPossible Musics
New Yorkers Mike Brown and Jeff Düngfelder associated with Intelligent Life, an unidentified musical project as singular as it is varied that arouses curiosity from the first minutes. Intelligent Life - Everything Is Always The Same.
Here is an album that is difficult to classify, which changes style, tone and atmosphere over the titles. An album dominated by the sound of the double bass and which oscillates between experimental music, avant-garde jazz and ambient music.
At the helm of the project are double bassist Mike Brown, a musician affiliated with many groups, and Jeff Düngfelder (aka Ümlaut), an experimental sound artist and composer based in Queens, New York. Together, they give life to a strange and cinematographic album with headlines. Lynchien on Shelter In Place or Out Of The Dawn, minimalist and ambient jazz on Large Chunks Of Meaning or Not Even The Past Is Done, - recalling the work of bassist Josh Werner, author of the bewitching Mode for Titan in 2020 - , or even more experimental on If No One Else or Until A Distance Appears with its creaking strings.
In the end, Everything is Always the Same is an album in which one will gladly get lost in its meanders, in its dark and sinuous recesses. A stimulating and quite convincing sound and musical experience.