Reviews

Igloo Magazine

The small is in the great, and the great in the small on this album of ordinary experimental ambient music. Each time I listen I get drawn in by Ümlaut’s exceptional attention to detail. The songs are all filled with tiny sounds placed into longer drifts of texture. The long drones and sustained parts hold all of these small sounds together in a poetic dance of painstaking deliberation. You can hear just how attentive to detail Ümlaut (aka Jeff Düngfelder) is, and it makes me—as a listener—want to pay attention to those details.

This is digital acupuncture. One small pinprick in a certain node can change the course of the entire album’s energy structure. Or it is like casting the I Ching. Constant line changes transform one hexagram into another. Like life, these pieces are in continual shifting states from one to another. Yet they are all inside a container that holds these changes together and keeps them in a semblance of cohesive form. Just like the ordinary human being of the title, these pieces all shift around in place and time, but there are elements that make it distinct. Songs like “Everything is Appearing on Its Own” showcase this method where each sound is left to display itself before segueing into the next sound. Yet they are connected, joined together, so another way of hearing it is as a continuum with no separation.

Listening, I think of the term used by ancient architects when they were creating their beautiful buildings: discontinuous proportion. That is, a geometrical proportion where every quantity that is getting compared is different. Architects used it make sure these different proportions that none-the-less had a symmetry. The part is made to fit the whole.

This work does have a symmetric whole, even if a lot of it seems random. Yet those random bits were selected, making them less random. And by showcasing the random, Ümlaut puts them into connection with the particular. One small sound can change the entire shape of the galaxy, or at least the shape of this album. And listening to it, I am changed, I am different than I was. How different. I don’t know. Ask me in a few years, when I might not remember the detail that changed things so much was a sound on this album.  

Clicks of glitch merge into a shadow space where echoes are applied to dial tone field recordings left alone in a minimalist room. Modified and recommodified consumer electronics spazz out briefly with light noise, covering everything in a halo of slightly erratic electrical discharge from gear that might also be partially defective. But these defects are like wabi sabi cracks in the pottery of the songs, showcasing fragile beauty.

I love a good puzzle and another interesting bit about this album is how each track name showcases an aesthetic choice Ümlaut put to work. The title track comes last and features soft pads and gentle pitch bending, easy to zone out to in a hammock as calm breeze blows by, the faint whiff of incense coming from nearby.

Meanwhile “Poème” features a recurring bell and layers of crackling static. This reminds me of early electronic tone poems, indeed, Edgard Vareses’ Poème électronique. Piano memories reach to the surface on other tracks, while damage control is attempted on others. Sounds puncture space, and things float to the surface. It’s just another ordinary day for being human and listening to music when the smallest detail might make the biggest waves.

Original review > HERE

Santa Sagre

Peering into these works lets out a reflective and unexpected plethora, shaping out versions -visitations?- which shifts each odd tone fluently. By the use of sampling his compositions has the effect of multiple responses, questioning where we’ve been for all these years. 

A showcase only contains what it can hold unless you’re listening to ‘Un Être Humain Ordinaire’.

Such an animated story has gotten out; the creator’s mind cannot hold these revolving strands in order. Releasing such dreams only opens up a concept with each passing moment, streaming onwards… circling back track by track. This foreshadowing is far from a dank or dull interpretation  from Ümlaut; investigating a collaged musician’s delight.  I’ve been inundated by so many artful passages, merging Into a scenery. Or is it a tapestry?  

Spiraling such thoughts becomes a slippery theory, “Artifacts As Media” or ‘Punching Space” evaporate splendidly; as we’re approaching the closing bells “Damage Control” isn’t controlled it is a suggestion, staying just out of reach. “Everything is Appearing on its Own” frames those questions bravely. 

Nowhere will you fine any trace of pride, arrogance or a vindictive hostility here; standing in the midst where the sea freezes ‘An Ordinary Human Being’ is in its own dimension. Each gate on that ice is erased by a character which on this outing is both perceptible and tangible.

Original review > HERE

Musique Machine

There are some ambient, abstract works of electronic music that are so hermetic – claustrophobic, even – that the worlds they created leave little room for an outside even as their source material depends on it. This is neither good nor bad; it is simply a way of categorizing certain albums as they appear in a landscape populated by a host of other endeavors, be they groups, performances, or listener-driven works. Ümlaut (aka Jeff Düngfelder) is unapologetically hermetic, and his latest release, Un Étre Humain Ordinaire, is a tribute to the expansive and yet cloyingly interiorized space of ambient production. Nestled in the outer reaches of rural Connecticut, Ümlaut pieced 12 compositions for this release, totaling over an hour, in which the idea of capture – both literally in the recording process and as an arrested individual – is visited over and over again, like an ethnographer's sketchbook of the self.

There are few rhythmic elements on Un Étre Humain Ordinaire, which causes the whole album to drift, moving between sound sources and devices without predetermined structure or pattern. The effect on "Everything Is Appearing On Its Own," is creepy, as if the self-referential crux of the track might gesture to something beyond the composer himself, like a ghost or spirit. It is often cold and a bit creepy, this mood, with field recordings providing the echoed traces of absent footsteps or movements through undefined spaces. One technique, evidenced on "Artifacts as Media," is to push one sonic language against another, where these leftover pieces (artifacts) are layered not just for aesthetic but also methodological interest.
 
Un Étre Humain Ordinaire should appeal to those who are drawn to ambient works with a meandering, often hermetic character, as well as others who delight in the more conceptual, self-referential composers of abstract electroacoustic music.

Original review > HERE

Chain D.L.K.

From the tranquil landscapes of northern Connecticut comes "Un Etre Humain Ordinaire", the latest opus from Jeff Düngfelder’s Ümlaut project. As a composer devoted to the art of minimalism and the poetics of silence, Düngfelder crafts sonic environments that feel like forgotten fragments of a dream. With this release, he invites listeners into a meticulously constructed yet ethereal world - an intimate labyrinth where silence and sound are equally weighted.

The album’s foundation is built on field recordings, electro-acoustic textures, and an approach that merges the ambient, the experimental, and the cinematic. Düngfelder manipulates sound like a painter working with muted hues: "Un Etre Humain Ordinaire" isn’t a vivid oil painting, but a delicate watercolour on the verge of fading. It recalls the fragile beauty of works by artists like William Basinski or Taylor Deupree, where the space between notes becomes a canvas for imagination.

Tracks like "Forgetting to Remember" and "Until We Became Nothing" exemplify Düngfelder’s ability to balance minimalism with emotional weight. Gentle drones and fragmented synth lines seem to drift in and out of focus, leaving behind faint traces of melancholy. It’s not music that demands attention - it patiently waits for the listener to lean in, like a whisper in a crowded room.

Though Düngfelder flirts with the aesthetics of randomness, every moment of the album feels intentional. Field recordings in "What Comes Floating to the Surface" and "Artifacts As Media" are manipulated into unrecognizable textures, transforming the mundane into something extraordinary. The rustle of leaves, the hum of distant machinery, and the creak of wood take on a hypnotic quality, blurring the line between organic and synthetic.

This careful manipulation evokes the spirit of musique concrète pioneers like Pierre Schaeffer, but with a modern twist. The influence of microsound artists like Alva Noto or Stephan Mathieu is also present, as Düngfelder stretches time and space to reveal the hidden layers within each sound.

Each track title reads like a line from an existential poem: "Ordinary Light, Under Things", "Damage Control", "Everything Is Appearing on Its Own". These phrases offer glimpses into the album’s conceptual depth, reinforcing its themes of memory, absence, and the fleeting nature of existence. The album’s title, "Un Etre Humain Ordinaire" ("An Ordinary Human Being"), suggests a meditation on the universal yet deeply personal experience of being - and the paradox of finding extraordinariness within ordinariness.

Recorded and mastered at Hopmeadow Studio, the album exudes a strong sense of place. Yet it’s not tied to a single location. Instead, it evokes liminal spaces - the edges of forests, the twilight between waking and dreaming, the moments just before a memory fades. Tracks like "La Mer Gelée" (The Frozen Sea) and "Pour Un Moment" (For a Moment) feel as if they are suspended in time, inviting the listener to inhabit their fragile beauty.

Düngfelder’s work fits comfortably within the lineage of ambient pioneers such as Brian Eno, Harold Budd, or even Jóhann Jóhannsson. But where Eno may lean toward serenity, Düngfelder embraces a subtle dissonance, letting moments of tension ripple through the fabric of his soundscapes. The result is music that feels both expansive and intimate - like staring at a vast horizon while holding a cherished keepsake in your hand.

For those willing to surrender to its subtle charms, "Un Etre Humain Ordinaire" is a profoundly moving journey - like finding yourself on the edge of something vast and unknowable, only to realize the edge was always within you.

Original review > HERE

African Paper

With his latest work, “Un Être Humain Ordinaire”, released a few weeks ago, composer and sound artist Jeff Düngfelder alias Ümlaut presents a profound nighttime exploration into the hidden corners of the human experience. The album, whose title so aptly evokes the apparent everydayness of life, unfolds as a masterful, electro-acoustic sound mosaic that is both introspective and limitless.

From the very beginning, the album draws you into diverse and, despite the mostly darkened moods, multi-colored scenarios that are reminiscent of cinematic dream worlds. The opener already seduces with distant synth touches, the chirping of imaginary crickets, a mild breeze and a gentle chirping. It is a hypnotic composition in which every sound component fulfills its task - calming or stimulating, but always seemingly pointing to something transcendent. This attention to detail and diversity characterize the entire record and make it an acoustic kaleidoscope that reveals new facets with every listen.

Ümlaut knows how to create soundscapes that impress with their poetic precision. The compositions often seem like explorations of unknown regions: In one piece, you glide through an aquatic, almost gelled sound world, where dripping sounds, bell-like sounds and digital noises come to the surface like flotsam. The labyrinthine and playful, typical of Düngfelder's work, are once again elevated to a principle here. At another point, the music immerses the listener in a tropical night, in which metronome-like attacks and airy noises merge with mysterious nocturnal animal noises (these and the airy wind are among the more obvious leitmotifs that run through the compositions). Piano parts and percussive accents add a drama that is reminiscent of the Buddhist-inspired cycle of becoming and passing away, the extinction of which the title “Until We Became Nothing” perhaps alludes to. The music always remains subtle and nuanced.

The dynamic complexity of the compositions is particularly impressive. Some pieces seem cinematic, with sharp rhythms and dark, droning basic tones that develop into orchestral miniatures. Others, on the other hand, are meditative tableaux, permeated by bell sounds, vibrating textures and subtle electronic hissing. It is above all this balance between structure and openness that gives “Un Être Humain Ordinaire” its own character. The album is also convincing in terms of its theme: the titles of the tracks function as poetic references to the sonic and conceptual worlds that Düngfelder creates. Sometimes he uses precise sounds to describe the moment, sometimes the point in space, sometimes what comes to the surface by chance. The final composition in particular brings the work together harmoniously - a quiet farewell that rises gently once more to finally fade away gently.

In all these ways, “Un Être Humain Ordinaire” with its characteristic poetry creates an intimate but at the same time universal world. If it is really a tribute to the everyday of human existence, then Ümlaut's precisely thought-out and yet never unspontaneous aesthetic turns it into something extraordinary. (U.S.)

Original review > HERE