ODNU + ÜMLAUT - Abandoned Spaces

Michel Mazza and Jeff Düngfelder live a few hours by train north of New York, surrounded by sprawling parks and wooded hills. For years they lived in NYC, immersing themselves in 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 exclusively on Bandcamp in 2023). Mazza has followed a path similar to Düngfelder's, putting out some twenty electronic albums over fifteen years, steeped in rock and jazz flavors, as well as composing music for films and television commercials. Both musicians share a passion for “Another Green World”, the 1975 masterpiece by Brian Eno.

“Abandoned Spaces” is their first collaboration. A collection of eight tracks suspended between pastoral ambient atmospheres, guitar arpeggios played with a light touch, gusts of synthesizers, chimes, percussion and little else.

The album's first two tracks, “In Numberless Forms” and “Sleepy I Slept”, make it immediately clear where the hearts of these two American musicians lie, somewhere between the twilight electronics of Taylor Deupree, the dreamy psychedelia of Hammock, and the ever-present Eno.

On the eponymous “Abandoned Spaces” the album's psychedelic side emerges more clearly, with glissando guitar lines up front, a touch of distortion, and the liquid groove defined by brushed drums.

The eight long tracks on the tracklist, over sixty-five minutes in total, create a single continuous flow which, without explosions or dramatic twists, remains remarkably enveloping and meticulous in its details.

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25/04/2024