Same But Different
In Japanese, Yūgen signifies “a profound, mysterious sense of the beauty of the universe… and the sad beauty of human suffering.” Yūgen suggests that which is beyond what can be said, but not as an allusion to another world. It is about this world, about this experience. The album cover and musical tracks were inspired by a piece of art that hangs in my bedroom. For weeks, as I lay on my back after surgery, I looked at the painting every day. It became a sort of meditative practice. Up until my recuperation, the meaning of the painting had eluded me. But over time, a closer focus on the artwork brought forth a revelation. The painting was about being reborn. New life, with no attachment to the past and no expectation of the future. A profound liberation of the spirit overtook me. Electronic sparks, intonations, chords, arrhythmic percussions, chimes and whooshes of sound free floated through my imagination… and “same but different” was born.
• Mixed and mastered at Hopmeadow Studios
• Album art by Sue Z Smith
Tracklisting:
- No Beginning
- Existence
- Clarity and Awareness
- Observing the Visions
- The Mind-stream
- Causes and Conditions
- Sentient Beings
- The Truth Body
- Divinations and Prophecies
- Bodhisattvast
Ümlaut
Ümlaut is Jeff Düngfelder, a U.S. experimental composer/sound artist now based in the northern Connecticut countryside. The thematic concepts distinguishing his work are absence and silence; the ineffable exchange between viewer and image; random moments of stillness within a landscape in flux.
Using a minimalistic, electro-acoustic approach, his elusive patchwork of field recordings and electronics merge with the world of shadows and colours. Allowing for infinite possible interpretations, he lets the listener’s imagination fill in the blanks between the grainy textural sounds with elements of ambient, musique concrète and noise. Combining spaciousness with a sense of intimacy introduces a musical language of experimental ambience. His memory recordings expose the complex relationship between music and silence.
Reviews
Musique Machine
Ümlaut is the sonic output of Jeff Düngfelder, an experimental composer and sound artist, currently based in rural northern Connecticut, USA. Same But Different, the project’s newest album, is basically the artistic outcome of a recovery surgery, ignited after a meditative and healing process.
The work spreads into ten introverted pieces. By this I mean it doesn’t shout and all elements were injected strategically. Everything blooms up rapidly with the simplicity and the intimacy generating expectation, which gets fulfilled to the fullest extent. The prologue is itself rapid, leaving space for the actual narration that kicks in almost instantly.
Düngfelder’s music has a certain vintage aesthetic, without being retro. This is essential experimental music in the fields of kraut and satellite sub-genres. The Kraut sound gets infected by tribal elements, along with eerie, yet progressive electronics, field recording chunks and low-profile ambient with regulated rhythmic beats! Eventually, everything will get ejected back to a pure kraut pathway and so on; in a circular motion. That sums it up. Maybe I’m preoccupied, but what I’m listening is a Tangerine Dream (just an example) and a Brian Eno (just another example) coitus, with holistically solid and multi-disciplined sonic roots. An abstract strolling into Ümlaut’s (and Düngfelder ‘s) very personal perspective. Though Ümlaut is also spectacularly-modern.
A possible question that is being asked is, can something be the same but different? Literally this album is a fusion between delicate contemporary electronic music and an oriental scent. Not something that hasn’t been heard before, but the clarity in the creative backstage, marks it as unique. Question answered with a high dose of sonic serotonin, most probably and most importantly! There’s nothing more to be explained, nothing more to be said but: senses are easily tuned in while listening. Check it out for yourself.
4/5 stars!
Original article > HERE
Igloo Magazine
More akin to a soundtrack we didn’t know was essential, Same But Different from Connecticut-based experimental sound composer Jeff Düngfelder (operating under the Ümlaut alias), is a baffling ten piece collection. Surreal field recordings blend with processed glitch veils intertwined and densely layered. Nostalgic moments and crunchy bits weave an infinite web of looping sparks and drifting drones as “No Beginning” opens with its swelling beauty. Calmly floating synth structures and downtempo beatwork hover just above the landscape as evidenced by the swirling strands of “Clarity and Awareness” and the curious ambient sizzling of “Sentient Beings.” Düngfelder’s adeptness for diving deep into abstract sonic worlds is baffling; where even the most translucent of pieces (“Divinations and Prophecies” and “Bodhisattvas”) come to life unknowingly—bursting into shape from the farthest sonic contours.
Original article > HERE
A Closer Listen
The contrast between “the beauty of the universe and the sad beauty of human suffering” is highlighted in the bubbling tones of Same But Different, a spiritually-tinged set from Ümlaut (Audiobulb, April 15).
Original article > HERE
Nieuwe NotenDüngfelder says about 'Same but Different': “The album cover and musical tracks were inspired by a piece of art that hangs in my bedroom. For weeks, as I lay on my back after surgery, I looked at the painting every day. It became a kind of meditative practice. Up until my recuperation, the meaning of the painting had eluded me. But over time, a closer focus on the artwork brought forth a revelation. The painting was about being reborn. New life, with no attachment to the past and no expectation of the future.” Opener 'No Beginning' initially sounds disturbing, with strange crackles, but it soon makes way for a more pleasant kind of tension. That of a very varied sound landscape, certainly containing elements of ambient, but also of noise and musique concrète. A line that is continued in 'Exystence', a piece that gives shape to Düngfelder's words above in everything. And music that, as noted earlier, often has a pleasant form of tension, of which 'Observing the Visions' beautifully testifies, partly thanks to the percussive sounds that Ümlaut produces here, just like the more subdued sounds of 'The Mind-Stream' and 'Causes and Conditions'.
Original > HERE