Ümlaut (aka northern Connecticut-based Jeff Düngfelder) elevates An Auxiliary View, delving light years into transparent soundscapes, expansive musique concrète, microscopic glitch mechanisms, and static pulses for the consistently adventurous Audiobulb imprint.
Intricate otherworldly strata
Ümlaut (aka northern Connecticut-based Jeff Düngfelder) elevates An Auxiliary View, delving light years into transparent soundscapes, expansive musique concrète, microscopic glitch mechanisms, and static pulses for the consistently adventurous Audiobulb imprint. These dozen captivating audio Polaroids manage to inhabit finer fragments and fluctuating fissures that Düngfelder meticulously expands upon. “In exchange, offering”‘s bubbling synth swells drive home this message where darker soundtrack elements surround us, as “Gaze back into you”‘s minuscule field recordings are looped into a repetitive and melodic pitter-patter sequence that eventually transforms into a cinematic supernova midway through.
An Auxiliary View delivers a perspective that looks at the world from a tangential angle. Its tracks range from the exploding auditory wonder and gloom of “When work speaks” to the more upbeat yet undulating beauty of “Always some reason.” The album simply ebbs and flows in all the ways that we find comforting (and baffling) as Ümlaut focuses on intricate otherworldly strata. Where hundreds of found sounds are condensed into solitary and surreal collections, all the brittle bits and bobbles of life migrate into a singular whole. Modern classical segments brush against grittier contours and snapshots of nostalgic images that we didn’t realize were right in front of us the whole time.
Closing with a four chapter series of tracks all titled “Attacked by ideas,” Düngfelder gathers a diverse and intricate stream of broken noises, glitch sound bytes, and ambient whirs, barely grazing the surface of a smorgasbord of deftly woven sequences evoking complex dreamlike moments. “Surrendering to the highly detailed textures, timbre and weightlessness of its alchemical sound-blending,” An Auxiliary View is a perplexing and beautiful sonic panoramic of epic proportion.
An Auxiliary View is available on Audiobulb. [Bandcamp]
