Mùm - The Fairytale of Pop-Folktronica

Mùm are one of the leading bands on today's electronic music scene, particularly within that strand of minimal, atmospheric electronica that has developed in recent years above all in northern Europe (see the surprising Norwegians Royksopp, as well as Iceland's veteran Gus Gus) and through the releases of the Berlin label Morr Musik.

But Múm's formula is unlike any other. It's hard to think of another band made up of such different talents, so well matched within the world of electronic music. The four members' backgrounds couldn't be more distant from one another: Gunnar Tynes came up through punk and hardcore in his youth; Orvar Smárason started out composing music for video games, working simply with a Commodore Amiga; and finally the twin sisters Kristín-Anna and Gyða Valtýsdóttir came from classical training, on piano and cello respectively.

The four met in 1998, on the occasion of a theatrical production in Reykjavik. The Valtýsdóttir sisters were part of the company staging the show, while Orvar and Gunnar contributed to the soundtrack. The two men had in fact already joined forces two years earlier, working as remixers and collaborators for various Icelandic artists.

In 1999 Múm began to make a name for themselves by collaborating with the electronic-industrial musician Musikvatur, well known in Iceland, who would later return the favour by remixing some of the quartet's tracks.

But it's with their debut album Yesterday Was Dramatic, Today Is Ok that Múm revealed themselves as a dazzling new presence: initially released only in Iceland on the small label Thule Records, the album took almost no time to travel the world, earning widespread acclaim from specialist critics and growing favour with the public. The record is indeed a little gem that immediately highlights the distinctive traits of Múm's sound: the heart of their music lies not in the electronic rhythms, clearly derivative of the German school and especially of groups like Mouse On Mars, but rather in the deployment of instruments of every kind layered over the beats crafted by Orvar. Toy keyboards and synthesizers alternate and blend with classical instruments, accordion (played by Kristín-Anna), and strictly acoustic guitars and bass. Everything comes together with remarkable naturalness, immediacy and simplicity, thanks to melodies of refined sweetness and great evocative power. From the opening "I'm 9 Today" (a track that would later spark a dispute between the band and Thule, over an advertising licence granted by the label to Sony without the band's authorisation) to the closing "Slow Bycicle", the record unfolds through long, enveloping tracks, all instrumental except for the enchanting "The Ballad Of Broken Birdie Records", where we first encounter the childlike, intangible voices of the Valtýsdóttir twins. Standouts among the rest include "Smell Memory", nervous, almost schizophrenic, caught between obsessive beats and a frantic strumming of guitar; utterly different is "There's A Number Of Small Things", perhaps their masterpiece, a tender lullaby complete with music box, with the faintest acoustic instruments lingering in the background, which in its central section closes into a harmony so rarefied it comes closer to chamber music than electronica. Another high point is "Awake On A Train", a track clearly split into two halves, one driven by "railway" electronic rhythms, the other dominated by accordion and soft guitars. The eight minutes of distant echoes and calls in "Sunday Night" carry the listener into a truly magical, unreal dimension. Múm's music, behind an apparent naivety, conceals a sophisticated sonic research. "Our music generates strange sensations," says Gunnar Tynes, "like when a strange scent hits you and brings back something you already know but can't quite place. Or like when you're walking outdoors and you're struck by the sight of things you wouldn't expect to see together."

After remixing for fellow Icelanders and friends Sigur Rós and Emiliana Torrini, and a range of multimedia performances and soundtracks (including one for a restored version of the classic "Battleship Potemkin"), Múm returned with an album that manages to top its predecessor, Finally We Are No One. Released, like the previous one, in both English and Icelandic versions, by the English label Fat Cat Records (the same one that introduced the world to Sigur Rós), conceived and written in total isolation in an old lighthouse on the Icelandic coast where the band shut themselves away for three weeks, and produced with the help of Valgeir Sigurdsson (who had already worked with fellow Icelander Björk), the album settles into a slightly more defined, and in some sense more "pop", format compared to the debut. There are far more sung tracks, the songs are generally shorter, and the electronics make even more room for melodies and acoustic instruments. What hasn't changed, and has if anything improved, is the quartet's extraordinary ability to paint incredibly evocative, hazy, rarefied atmospheres, to stir deep feelings, to conjure boundless, unspoiled landscapes: masterful in this respect are the two longest and most elaborate tracks on the album, the eight minutes of "Half Noise", with its slow, inexorable descent into an abyss of silence barely disturbed by ambient noise, and the twelve minutes of the closing "The Land Between Solar Systems", in which Kristín and Gyða's voices merge into a whisper that accompanies the track's unfolding towards territories of boundless beauty and melancholy. But every track here shows superb quality of arrangement, both on the acoustic side (just listen to the strings that close "I Can't Feel My Hand Anymore" to believe it) and on the electronic one, as in the splendid single "Green Grass Of Tunnel".

The overall result is a masterpiece of sonic suggestion, confirming the group as one of the most valuable forces in contemporary music and confirming Iceland as a genuine goldmine of musicians capable of touching the most sensitive chords of the unconscious. As Orvar Smárason himself puts it: "We like to hear what feelings our songs can evoke. When we write and play we have no intention of steering the listener towards particular moods. It's music that arises spontaneously and is evidently not perceived the same way by everyone, so some people picture landscapes, some use it for their own imaginary stories, and some just let themselves be lulled with an open mind. What we want is for each of our listeners to be able to form their own interpretation based on the emotions our words and notes stir up."

The disappointment, however, was bitter when, two years later, Summer Make Good hit the shops. Something had jammed in the magic formula discovered by the Icelandic quartet (now a trio, actually, following the departure of Gyða Valtýsdóttir). The album disappoints first and foremost on the band's "strong" side, that of naturalness and spontaneity. And in terms of atmosphere: catatonic and static, ultimately stuck, inconclusive, soporific. Where on previous records the rarefaction, the "half-asleep" quality, those soft, lulling sounds were the band's strength, here they become its weakness.

You can tell the guys have grown up; you can hear it on a track like "Weeping Rock", with its crowded, complex arrangement. The use of electronics is, moreover, less evident than in the past: the percussion is often "real", with "played" instruments taking the upper hand. In short, the packaging is undeniably top-notch. It's the picture inside that leaves you puzzled. "Sing Me Out The Window" would be a very interesting track, thanks above all to the happy idea of adding a "western" guitar to the arrangement, were it not trivialised by a very predictable use of electronic noises and voices. And a more imaginative piece like "The Island Of Children's Children" is pleasant enough, but hardly inspired.

The truly interesting tracks are practically only the brief instrumental interludes: the "dark ambient" introduction of "Hú Hviss"; the cosmic interlude of "Away"; the out-of-tune, country-flavoured music box of "Small Deaths Are The Saddest"; and above all that small, refined masterpiece of sonic assembly that is "Stir". The only song that manages to lift itself out of the general torpor is "Will The Summer Make Good", with its ambient sounds and its lopsided, ramshackle yet enveloping melodies.

Summer Make Good amounts to little more than an exercise in style, rather sterile and monotonous. It's probably just what's called "a transitional album", but the disappointment is there nonetheless, and there's no point hiding it.

In 2007, Múm returned after a great deal of upheaval in the line-up: having also lost the second Valtýsdóttir twin, Kristín, who left the band and ended up caught up in the dreadful sonic pranks of her husband Avey Tare (already a member of the questionable Animal Collective), the new Múm now revolved around the founding duo, Orvar Smárason and Gunnar Tynes, now joined by new members Hildur Guðnadóttir (voice), Ólöf Arnalds (strings and guitar) and Samuli Kosminen (percussion). A line-up that guarantees a fuller, more live-sounding sound than ever. In search of fresh inspiration, Orvar and Gunnar composed little vignettes in which the electronic component is increasingly sidelined, turning for the first time to a heavy presence of male voices, arranging the tracks with coherence, dynamism and inventiveness - perhaps too much of it - while still keeping that deliberately lopsided, childlike, naïve sonic signature that has always set Múm apart clearly recognisable.

Go Go Smear The Poison Ivy opens with the delightful "Bressed Brambles", a track that in its structure and atmosphere tries to recapture the magic of their masterpiece Finally We Are No One. It only partly succeeds, but compared to the album from three years earlier it's already a fine step forward. More treacherous paths are explored by "A Little Bit Sometimes", a decidedly successful episode, unlike the inconclusive music-box jumble of little voices and noises on "These Eyes Are Berries" and the embarrassing "They Made Frogs...", an Eighties video-game-style ditty with unbearable vocal and instrumental inserts.

Luckily, elsewhere the record's uneven course returns to more than respectable levels, especially with the elegant "Moon Pulls", a brief, shadowy foray into wholly acoustic territory, and with "Marmalade Fires", a splendid track, lulling and unreal in the way only Múm, at their best, can create. "Guilty Rocks" is perhaps the strangest creation of their career, and leaves you baffled, irritated and swept along all at once, in equal measure. In any case, you can always return to more familiar ground, like the delightful atmospheric sketch that closes the album, "Winter", and the warm "Dancing Behind My Eyelids", perhaps the least original track on the record, yet boasting its most beautiful melody, the kind that lodges in the memory from the very first listen.

The good old days are still far off, but between light and shade, Gunnar and Orvar earn themselves renewed credibility.

The following Sing Along To Songs You Don't Know continues the band's path of redefining their style after reshaping themselves into a broad collective open to collaborations. The conceptual dedication to the theme of water translates into a "liquid" consistency in the band's music across the fifty minutes of an album focused on the pursuit of a pop freshness, tinged with echoes of choral tradition and marked by the coexistence of electronic residue in the form of beats, crackles and glitches, alongside a myriad of sounds drawn from a very rich array of instruments, including piano, ukulele, marimba, organs and recurring strings (the latter courtesy of a quartet that includes cellist Hildur Guðnadóttir).

Here too there's no shortage of electro-analog flourishes and that taste for playful, unbridled rhythms that harks back to the band's folktronic origins, but this presence is now a timid, residual one, filtered and overshadowed in terms of sheer effectiveness by more varied and convincing sonic directions.

What's decidedly appreciable are the continuous stylistic mutations that, without ever jolting the listener, run through the entire course of the album, offering numerous different facets of the liquid pop and dreamy choral folk that define it as its standout elements. A sunny pop spirit never heard before, along with a penchant for measured little choruses and countermelodies, remain constants from which the band ventures into sonic territory that is in some cases surprising.

But it's above all the closing stretch of the album where Múm show they're able to break free from their past, placing the emphasis on irregular acoustic streaks, futuristic ambient-pop paths, and vintage choral touches on tracks that even recall Stereolab and Grizzly Bear.

This outlines Múm's new identity: a band that has rediscovered a decent personality and expressive freshness, leaving behind its own artistic past in favor of a playful dimension of folktronic pop.

While waiting for a new album to show even more clearly what new artistic paths the ensemble is taking, in 2012 Morr Music thought it fitting to let fans discover the group's earliest recordings and experiments, from when its members were little more than teenagers. Early Birds in fact includes Múm's first and rare 12" single, shared with Spunk and released by a tiny local label, Sófi/Er Hommi, plus various demo versions, unreleased tracks and other curiosities spanning 1998 to 2000 (the year that saw the release of the splendid debut Yesterday Was Dramatic, Today Is Ok).

The anthology opens right with the two songs from the highly prized 1998 EP, a brilliant example of how the band already knew, even back then, how to blend sweet lullabies, childhood memories, glitchy electronic experiments and folk echoes. “Bak Þitt Er Sem Rennibraut” and “Póst Póstmaður” are two tracks whose rhythms contain an element that would later disappear — an almost jungle-drum'n'bass pulse produced with little Casio keyboards, if not even some even more basic toy instrument. The third track, “Gingúrt”, is likewise a playful balancing act between graceful melodies, more hammering rhythms and the sound of an accordion that's also more joyous and festive than ever.

“Glerbrot”, on the other hand, is a song described on the CD's sleeve as lost and now (thankfully) recovered: the electronic drums still barrel ahead over broken rhythms, but the mood is different — here the textures are more nocturnal, almost drawing comparisons with the Pan American of the first album meeting the Mouse On Mars of “Autoditaker”. Next comes another unreleased track, “Hvernig Á Að Særa Vini Sína”, where the beats are slower and hazier, there's more of an effects-laden guitar, but above all vocals appear for the first time, in a very delicate, almost shy male-female duet. “Bak Þitt Er Sem Rennibraut” is instead one of the group's most unusual compositions, especially for its use of six-string guitar with a distorted, noisy effect and vigorous strumming that builds to an almost hard-rock finale (though always filtered through Múm's own sensibility). “Insert Coin” is, as the title suggests, exactly the little tune of some imaginary video game, laying bare almost nakedly just how much this playful aspect shaped the band's work.

With “Loksins Erum Við Engin” we start to glimpse the sonic horizon that would define the first part of Múm's recording career. “Náttúrubúruú”, meanwhile, acts as a trait d'union between the original, more dynamic phase and the second, more rarefied one — precisely because the composition starts out frantic and ends on a subdued note. “0,000Orð” is a caress of the kind that would soften even the hardest hearts, almost like some kind of TV goodnight jingle for children. The same can be said of “Lalalala Nlái Hnötturinn”, a tiny poem set to music that anyone who loved the group's first three albums absolutely must hear.

With the final four remaining tracks, it becomes clear that Múm had already found their own personal mode of expression. All that was left to do now was release the record and get themselves known. Before long their name would take flight and be cherished by countless sensitive souls scattered around the world.

The release of Early Birds had therefore been thrilling, but it had also left a slightly bitter aftertaste, since those early Múm recordings also came across as hints of minimal pop and melancholy toy-box electronics that the group seemed to have betrayed in its more recent releases. The departure of the two essential female figures, the Valtýsdóttir sisters, had surely also played a role — their presence had lent a dreamlike, fairy-tale quality to the already delicate and evocative sound of the other two members, Örvar Þoreyjarson Smárason and Gunnar Örn Tynes, who, after their departure, never found collaborators of the same artistic caliber.

But then, in 2013, came the new, sixth album, Smilewound, and right away there's a welcome surprise: Gyða, one of the twin sisters, had returned to the band after more than ten years, and from the very first notes you can tell something has changed, for the better.

Indeed, the album reveals itself as such from the very first notes of the single “Tootwheels”, but above all from the second track — titled in classic old-school Múm fashion — “Underwater Snow”: you sense that this is the record that should have followed Summer Make Me Good (2004) in terms of atmosphere and intensity.

The songs, in fact, really do feel like evolutions — with a poppier yet still hazy mood — of that path which loved to stir up childhood memories through evocative Icelandic landscapes.

The eleven tracks on the record are wonderful, almost familiar. There's also room for fun in the closing moments with “Whistle”, which features an unexpected, ethereal Kylie Minogue, in a collaboration that's thoroughly successful and never feels intrusive.

It takes a full twelve years to arrive at History Of Silence, album number seven, born of the collective's constant sonic exploration and the numerous experiences its members pursued individually. A temporal and geographical distance stitched back together through a record that took a full two years to put together, between recording sessions (held in Reykjavík, Berlin, Athens, Helsinki, New York and Prague, among other places), remixing and finishing touches.

The result of that effort takes shape in eight tracks of shifting form, united by a tendency to change course midway through and by the use of pause as an active element. That attitude is evident in the chiaroscuro of "Miss You Dance", in the evolution of "Our Love Is Distorting" and in the constant restarts of the airy "Kill The Light". Not that electronics and manipulation are left on the margins while instruments take full command — quite the opposite. It's precisely when they become more evident, while still maintaining a deft balance, that the album's best moments arrive. "Only Songbirds Have a Sweet Tooth" is the perfect proof of this, with effects acting on the vocals and synthetic glitches bringing back that enchanted universe which made the Múm sound so distinctive.

Contributions by Raffaello Russo ("Sing Along To Songs You Don't Know"), Gianluca Polverari ("Early Birds", "Smilewound") and Peppe Trotta ("History Of Silence")

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