An Auxiliary View

“An Auxiliary View,” the new album by Ümlaut, is an evocative meditation. The peaceful interplay of sounds evokes a hypnotic sense of movement. The listener is lured into a mind vehicle propelled by serenity and beauty, a journey unimpeded by the physical limitations of travel. Working in a lineage of musique concrète anchors one in the moment. Abstract, beat-less themes and atmospheric percussions interweave throughout the ambient drift and sizzling sound. Soothing synth tones, soulful vibrations and reverb-drenched chords floating in and out of the stereophonic field contribute to the metallic and blissful soundscape. As with most Ümlaut albums “An Auxiliary View” skirts most genres. The big differences here are textural and emotional. The micro-chopping and rearranging of barely recognizable sounds, which appear and disappear as otherworldly threads, twist and disentangle simultaneously, which makes the album feel brand new and fully known. Surrendering to the highly detailed textures, timbre and weightlessness of its alchemical sound-blending makes for a listening experience infinite with possibilities.

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.