Reviews

Monolith CocktailDrawn together and what proves to be a deeply intuitive union for the Audiobulb label, the Buenos Aires-born but NY/Hudson resident Michel Mazza (the OdNu of that partnership) and the US, northern Connecticut countryside dweller Jeff Düngfelder (Ümlaut) form a bond on their reductive process of an album, Abandoned Spaces.

The spaces in that title alongside reference prompts, inspirations motivated by the Japanese term for ‘continuous improvement’, “Kaizen”, and the procrastinated state of weakness of self-will known as the “Akrasia Effect”, are subtly and dreamily wrapped up in a gentle blanket of recollection. The lingering traces of humanity, nature and the cerebral reverberate or attentively sparkle and tinkle as wave after wave of drifty and pristine bulb-like guitar notes hover or linger, and passing drums repetitively add a semblance of rhythm and an empirical and evanescent beat.

The word ‘meticulous’ is used, and that would be right. For this is such a sophisticated collaboration and a near amorphous blending of influences, inspirations and styles: for instance, you can hear an air of Federico Balducci and Myles Cochran in the languorous guitar sculpting and threading, and an essence of jazz on the brushed and sifting, enervated hi-hat pumping drum parts. On the hallucinatory title-track itself there’s a strange touch of Byzantine Velvet Underground, Ash Ra Tempel and Floyd, and on the almost shapeless airy and trance-y ‘Unforeseen Scenes’ a passing influence of Mythos and the progressive – there’s also the first introduction of what sound like hand drums, perhaps congas being both rhythmically padded and in a less, almost non-musical way, flat-handily knocked.    

Tracks are given plenty of time to breathe and resonate, to unfurl spells and to open up primal, mirage-like and psyche-concocted soundscapes from the synthesized and played. And although this fits in the ambient electronic fields of demarcation, Abandoned Spaces is so much more – later on in the second half of the eight-track album, the duo express more rhythmic stirrings and even some harsher (though we are not talking caustic, coarse or industrial) elements of mystery, inquiry and uncertainty. Here’s hoping OdNu + Ümlaut continue this collaboration, as this refined partnership proves a winning formula.

Original > HERE

Anxious MagazineAbandoned Spaces combines the unique sounds, skills and approaches of both artists to creating music, creating an album full of otherworldly textures and melodies. Using a reductive approach to composition but with great attention to detail, Mazza and Düngfelder create jazzy vignettes that flow through heavily processed electric guitars, bass and drum parts that weave into an ambient landscape of humming micro sounds and ephemeral melodies. The songs flow into one another like water, giving the listening a devotional feel. In the truest sense of the word, Abandoned Spaces is a sound poem. Combining seemingly disparate musical genres, it is an album of impeccable sonic design and an impossible to classify style.

Original > HERE

African PaperOn February 10th, Audiobulb will release an extensive joint work by the two American producers and composers Michel Mazza (OdNu) and Jeff Düngfelder (Ümlaut), in which Mazza contributed guitar, electronics and effects and his colleague also contributed electronics and sound effects as well as the Artwork was responsible. In the eight atmospherically expressive pieces on “Abandoned Spaces”, the two musicians, who moved from New York City to the surrounding area, merge their respective creative ideas and inclinations into an inextricable unity, in which ambient panoramas with reminiscences deep into the history of electronic avant-garde music, somnambulistic Jazz guitars - sometimes bordering on unrecognizable - and corresponding bars and various unheard of events give rise to a completely new style, which the label rightly describes as more than the mere sum of its parts. With their own unique characteristics, the individual tracks reveal very different variations of what abandonment of spaces and places can sound like. “Abandoned Scenes”, one of the pieces that can already be streamed, would be our recommendation.

Original > HERE

OndarockMichel Mazza and Jeff Düngfelder live a few hours by train north of New York, among endless parks and forest-green hills. For years they lived in NYC experiencing the city's rich music scene. Mazza was born in Buenos Aires and moved to the United States as a boy; Jeff Düngfelder was born and raised in Queens, New York.
Ümlaut has released a dozen works, moving from the ambient-techno of “Vasco De Gama” (Carpe Sonum Novum, 2017) to the dreamlike textures of “Half The Speed ​​Of Light” (released only on Bandcamp in 2023). Mazza followed similar paths to those of Düngfelder, publishing around twenty electronic albums in fifteen years, imbued with rock and jazz flavours, as well as having composed music for films and television commercials. Both musicians share a passion for “Another Green World,” Brian Eno 's masterpiece released in 1975.

“Abandoned Spaces” is their first collaboration. A collection of eight songs suspended between bucolic ambient atmospheres, arpeggios of guitars played on tiptoe, gusts of synthesizers, bells, percussion and little else. The first two tracks of the album, “In Numberless Forms” and “Sleepy I Slept”, immediately clarify where the heart of the two American musicians beats, between the twilight electronics of Taylor Deupree , the dreamy psychedelia of Hammock and the omnipresent Eno. On the homonymous "Abandoned Spaces" the psychedelic vein of the album emerges more evidently, between the glissando of the six strings in the foreground, some distortion and the liquid groove defined by the brushes of the drums. The eight long tracks in the setlist, over sixty-five minutes long, create a single sound flow, which, despite without explosions and twists, is extremely enveloping and with attention to detail.

Original > HERE

Chain D.L.K."Abandoned Spaces" by ODNU + ÜMLAUT is an album that situates itself somewhere between the familiar and the utterly alien, much like discovering a forgotten, overgrown garden in the heart of a city. The album, a collaboration between Michel Mazza and Jeff Düngfelder, is an exercise in reduction, weaving together jazzy undertones with ambient soundscapes, and inviting the listener into a sonic world where every note feels like it's floating in a state of suspended animation.

Opening with "In Numberless Forms", the album immediately sets the tone with a languid, meditative flow that teeters on the edge of becoming something more defined but never quite does. The track is an eight-minute exploration of space and restraint, where electric guitars meander through a landscape of processed sounds and subtle electronics. It's as if ODNU and ÜMLAUT are daring you to find coherence in the mist they create, only to whisk it away just as you think you've grasped it.

"Sleepy I Slept" and "Unforeseen Scenes" continue this meandering journey. The former lulls you into a false sense of serenity with its soporific title, but the music itself is anything but straightforward. The processed guitar lines and ambient textures blend into a haze that feels almost dreamlike — if your dreams were soundtracked by a minimalist jazz ensemble that had forgotten their sheet music at home. The latter track shifts the mood ever so slightly, introducing a sense of unease, like discovering that the abandoned space you’ve wandered into has a few dark corners you hadn’t noticed before.

The title track, "Abandoned Spaces", is perhaps the most evocative piece on the album. It’s a nine-minute odyssey through desolate soundscapes, where the interplay between the electric guitar and electronics suggests both the beauty and the melancholy of forgotten places. There’s a deep sense of nostalgia here, but it’s nostalgia for something you can’t quite put your finger on—a memory that’s been eroded by time.

The album’s liner notes reference Aristotle’s adage that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”, and while "Abandoned Spaces" certainly strives for this, one might argue that the whole here is more a mosaic of absences than a cohesive entity. Each track flows into the next with a fluidity that’s admirable, but this seamlessness can also feel like a refusal to commit to any one idea. The music, much like its title suggests, often feels abandoned, left to drift aimlessly in an ambient fog.

That’s not to say there aren’t moments of brilliance. The detailed sound design is impeccable, and the way ODNU and ÜMLAUT handle their instruments—particularly the interplay of guitar and electronics—shows a level of craftsmanship that is truly impressive. But there’s a deliberateness to their refusal to provide the listener with any real sense of closure. Even in the final track, "A Wishing Choice", the album ends not with a resolution, but with a question mark — a fitting conclusion to a work that seems more interested in the spaces between the notes than the notes themselves.

In the context of ambient and experimental music, "Abandoned Spaces" sits comfortably among the works of artists like William Basinski or even Brian Eno, though with a more improvisational, jazz-inflected approach. It's a record that demands patience and an open mind; it's not here to entertain in the traditional sense, but rather to envelop, to subtly shift your perception of time and space.

Yet, this album also flirts with the danger of being too subtle for its own good. In its meticulous attention to detail and atmosphere, there’s a risk that "Abandoned Spaces" could easily drift into the background, becoming a ghostly presence rather than a commanding one. For listeners willing to give it the attention it requires, the rewards are there — buried in the mix, hidden in the spaces between the sounds. But for those seeking something more immediate, more tangible, the album’s enigmatic nature might prove frustrating.

"Abandoned Spaces" is a record that’s as much about what isn’t there as what is. It’s a sonic exploration of absence, a tone poem where the pauses and the spaces between sounds carry as much weight as the notes themselves. ODNU and ÜMLAUT have crafted an album that is both meditative and elusive, a work that asks more questions than it answers.

For those who appreciate the delicate art of restraint, the album offers a beautifully textured landscape to get lost in. But if you're looking for something that leaves a lasting impact, that provides more than just a fleeting glimpse of brilliance before receding back into the ether, "Abandoned Spaces" might feel a bit like its title — an intriguing place, but one that you might not return to once you’ve left.

Original > HERE

Nieuwe NotenAs mentioned, we hear Ümlaut on 'Abandoned Spaces' together with OdNu. The sound here is less experimental and the pieces sound more coherent. This makes this album the most deserving of the ambient designation of the three albums that are central here. This also makes it a more melodic album, although both musicians choose to combine this with the necessary variety. And OdNu adds the guitar, which can be clearly heard in 'Unforseen Scenes', beautifully mixed with rhythmic percussion sounds. And those sound combinations in the title piece 'Abandoned Spaces' are wonderfully beautiful. And special how, on the one hand, the tension regularly rises, while on the other hand we are surprised with almost classical guitar sounds. Something we also hear beautifully in 'Clear Distinction' and 'Kaizen'. 'The Akrasia Effect' is also worth seeing, because of its melodic content, but certainly also because of the futuristic effects that the musicians put into this piece. An atmosphere that we also find in the closing 'A Wishing Choice'.

Original > HERE