114/251
Search for a picture of unouomedude (pronounced you know you owe me dude) and you will find an array of images of a guy in retro specks and an oversized hip-hop cap. In every instance some sort of hazy effect obscures the image. Each is either overlaid with some opaque, floral pattern, over spilled with sun or seemingly over-exposed at the developers. This, as it turns out, is entirely suitable as you find this visualisation perfectly emulates the aural effect of listening to him too.
Previous release Marsh, from 2010, seemed to pick up where MGMT left off, only more hyped on pick and mix sweeties and cocktails with sparklers in . It chimed like a barrel full of Smarties falling down some stairs at a chilled-out Caribbean themed party, circa 1985 – if you catch my drift, or his. Maybe you don’t. But this, it seems, it part of the fun.
unouomedude (as instructed by his website to be written either entirely upper or lower case, not mixed) is a one man band from Jacksonville. Like the images, information about him is vague. This is fine by me as I’d rather natter about the sound in any case and the sound of the day is Frequency, released April 2011.
Compared to Marsh and various other demos knocking about on the net, Frequency has a far more solid and structured vibe. That is solid for someone who you feel you would only ever meet at a drunken, over-crowded house party, whilst spinning around endlessly on drugs or leaping through a sunny field with moon boots on. Actually unouomedude has managed to work out a way to auralise all three of those visions into the one track.
The psyche-esque opacity is apparent here in the form of over-driven guitars, appropriately muggy vocals, husky drums and a large, honeyed dollop of white noise. Distorted backing vocals whale away like drunken banshees adding an overall bouncy wave to the rhythm of the track. It’s vaguely reminiscent of Black Kids if they’d happen to have been fond psychedelic drugs and been on a ‘Be more assertive’ course.
While frequency feels more arranged and less randomly scattered than unouomedude’s other tracks, it provides you with a fantastic touch of that cross-eyed and multi-coloured kaleidoscope of sound that he experiments with so deliciously. The images you find of unouomedude really do show the sound that he is about. If it were a cocktails you’d take one measure of summer-psyche, one measure of euphoric garden party, two glugs of Cadbury’s Flake advert of the 80s (where that lovely long, blond haired dreamily walked through the fields – I know i’m a bit obsessed with this advert), and a large spoonful of Prince’s Lovesexy album cover.
I would thoroughly recommend you get it. Blare it out into your garden while you gulp Brandy Alexander’s by the apple tree. Play it loud and spin around on the spot in your office, I just did, it felt really good.
Today I listened to: unouomedude, all sorts from various different sites.
These are on my fireplace. Apart from the Caithness glass vase (which I bought for my Nanny once I got a saturday job and could buy people pressies, then got it back again when she died), the other two are from charity shops. I love their colour and shape. Each item embraces and entirely different aesthetic idea. Different shapes, colours, glazes and vibrances are used on each. That’s sort of why I like them together. They don’t ‘go’ as such, but they really do as well.
© Anne Louise Kershaw
