Insight.

Ümlaut

AB098: June 2020  

Insight

An inward journey of the self through the universe of sound. The album explores personal growth through the vessel of memory and emotion. The unexpected and the familiar are turned inward. Environmental sounds, manipulated field recordings, electronic processing and acoustic sourcing contribute to the compositional pastiche.

Realities surface and interweave with overlapping electroacoustic textures. Hypnotic loops, hushed tones, delicately percussive electronics, whispers and their synapses, interplay in a realm of silence. The past captures the future in the matrix of the present moment. The element of chance dances in a dynamic soundscape. With each color, the music comes alive.

Technology is humanized. Taking its time, “INSIGHT” unfolds through arpeggiated sequences, melody and ambience, and breathes meditatively through eclectic sound design.

   

Tracklisting:

  1. Insight
  2. The blue field
  3. If the eye never sleeps
  4. A little tomorrow
  5. Neu vision
  6. To leave it as it is
  7. The outer forms
  8. Collective memory
  9. Float
  10. An end in itself

Ümlaut

Ümlaut is Jeff Düngfelder, a U.S. experimental sound artist based in Queens, New York. 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. The listener sets out on a richly layered journey into the unknown. With computer-as-instrument, fragments of sounds, textures and a warm palette of noise patch together. Found acoustics will tweak the listener's inclination to reflect and discover. Manipulation of sound seamlessly juxtaposes the digital world with field recordings. The universal assimilates with the personal. Sit very quietly, and when the scenery shifts, slip between it.

 https://umlaut.work

ReviewsIgloo Magazine

More than a purely ambient album, this is another unusual gem that stretches that definition to include nearly every possible sub-genre of that umbrella, and would be more accurately described as an immersive, environmental album. On 2019’s Musique De Film,the Queens, New York-based musician created “randomized and weightless sounds that dither away with each listen,” with INSIGHT being his latest venture.

The press-release accurately describes INSIGHT as “…unfolding through arpeggiated sequences, melody and ambience, and breathes meditatively through eclectic sound design“—and we couldn’t agree more. The ten microsound textures are alternately formed around a simple looping chord, or, as often, what sounds like a distant field recording of a melody or loop, found sounds, rough industrial rhythms diffused into background scapes, and more. Each piece drifts through a series of these styles until the entire album starts to blend into one very long journey through the artist’s imagined worlds. The overall mood is almost like a naive wonder at the very sounds brought forth here—an upbeat, uplifting journey into a very lovely audio landscape.

Audiobulb Records

Exploratory Music   

Sheffield, UK
contact@audiobulb.com

Intricate Details

Paint With Sound