Blending the Beatles, Beefheart and Beck, this Kiwi newbie creates lo-fi yet luxuriant freak-funk and psych-pop
Hometown: Portland, Oregon.
The lineup: Ruban Neilson (vocals, guitar), with Jake Portrait (bass) and Julien Enrlich (drums) for live performances.
The background: You wait all year for a Kiwi newbie, and then two come at once. After yesterday's controversial New Zealander, who appears to have split New Band of the Day readers, here's another young man from down under who, like Willy Moon, is offering a fusion, or collision, of opposites ? think early Paul McCartney at his most DIY and homemade getting funky with mid-period Prince. Actually, so far there has been nothing but praise for Unknown Mortal Orchestra, including favourable tweets from ?uestlove, Das Racist and El-P. Not ELP, no ? El-P. This isn't Keith Emerson's bag at all. Greg Lake's, maybe.
Unknown Mortal Orchestra was conceived by Ruban Neilson ? formerly a member of "an award-winning NZ punk band from the celebrated Flying Nun label", so we're told ? as "an escape hatch to a new musical dimension where his vision of junkyard record-collector pop could be realised in a sound that recalled Captain Beefheart, Sly Stone and RZA jamming on some kids' TV theme too dark to ever be broadcast". The music was never intended to be performed live, but Neilson soon assembled a band, and since March 2011, the trio have toured the States in support of Smith Westerns, Portugal the Man and Yuck. Meanwhile, UMO have signed to True Panther, part of a roster that includes Glasser, Delorean and Girls.
That thing about not being designed for gigs seems about right: this music is studio-honed. Neilson's brainchild is for brainy children and fans of breakbeats ? hence the shout-outs from ?uestlove et al ? and askew tunefulness. The album starts with Ffunny Ffriends, setting out its store with its made-on-a-shoestring freak-funk psych-pop, as though Shuggie Otis had wrapped his warped falsetto around something from Lenny Kaye's Nuggets. The album evinces a familiarity with the history of pop ? or, given the Ariel Pink-style hypnagogic quality to the crude production, hiss-story of pop. Thought Ballune opens with some gentle George Harrison chords while How Can U Love Me? makes a virtue of the thin, spacious sound, making it seem even more like an idea, a dream of 60s pop. It's heavily phased, and drenched in whatever it took to make it sound drained: sheer enervated euphoria. Nerve Damage! is the Monkees' Daydream Believer in a blender with Beefheart's Electricity. And Little Blu House exists in the same pop universe that created Raspberry Beret, only it's more ragged, a Beck-ish (or Lewis Taylor-ish) version of lo-fi yet luxuriant psych-soul. At nine tracks and 30 minutes long, it fizzes by almost too quickly, but there's enough to keep you dancing, or twitching at least. It's funk, Jim, but not as we've heard it for a while.
The buzz: "As a mercurial experiment in home recording, Unknown Mortal Orchestra lines up nicely with the ex-Beatle's McCartney and McCartney II LPs" ? avclub.com.
The truth: It's time to go back ? sorry, Beck ? to the future.
Most likely to: Damage your speakers (it's all treble without a pause).
Least likely to: Damage your nerves.
What to buy: Unknown Mortal Orchestra is released by True Panther on Monday 18 July.
File next to: Beatles, Beefheart, Prince, Beck.
Links: unknownmortalorchestra.com.
Wednesday's new band: Howler.
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