MÚM – The Peel Sessions

(CD/12”, fat cat)

The Peel Sessions are still a unique thing. In a way, every band could go into any studio and take a quick stab at their songs in a new setting, trying to shed a new light on their work by doing some quick and dirty recording. But it just doesn’t happen outside of the Peel Sessions. Maybe because the adventurous spirit and way of being fanatic about music of John Peel is summoned every time a Peel Session happens. But this also lifts the benchmarks for Peel Sessions so much higher. They have to live up to this spirit and deliver something new and fresh and exciting.

These four to five songs by Múm were recorded in 2002, so four years ago, which means maybe it wasn’t just the spirit of John Peel lingering over the recordings but the man himself. The main thing though is that the question stated above can be answered in the positive: yes, these tracks do deliver. So much so, that for instance this version of “the ballad of the broken string” has been called the best one ever. I personally prefer the ghostly atmosphere of “There is that fear again”, with its longwinded melody and the soft female singing voice sending shivers down my spine. The way the contrast an arrangement of digi strings against a lonely violin is such a wonderful introduction to the twisted, explorative way the minds of these musicians work.

Over all tracks Múm’s inherent liveliness and creativity is bubbling and boiling, they are mixing their unique blend of percussions with synthies and guitars in a way you can’t tell if you are listening to electronic music or a indieband or some amalgamation of somebodies record collection. There are easy listening la la la’s gently flying over breakbeats, kiddie’s pianos or harmonica playing along to impenetrable walls of digital sounds, swooshes of scratching, tincans and more harmonicas, and layers of different things going on at the same time. The thick and detailled percussions are always a way to figure what you are listeing to, but they are also disguising the structure of the songs.

Mainly there is a vast freshness to the music, as if somebody opened up a window to let the air in. Lush compositions disregarding any kind of genre formalism or definition. Múm demands its own genre. It has been said before, but these Peel Sessions bring forth the fact even more: Múm are discoverers, who want to explore every direction at the same time.

There is a certain logic behind this reasoning, which won’t be brought into accordance with the basic western logic of mid-19^th century philosphers and its roots in euclidian mathematics. (1+1=2, A+B=B+A, and so on), but is more affiliated to a more fluent understanding of the world. Pantha rhei, everything is in flux (which is also a Greek saying, but has been lost in the imperialism of progressive science.) Maybe that is why the cover of this CD is somewhere between children’s painting and ancient cave paintings with some added spices of basic psychedelia, all of which are conscious states not or less influenced by the rules and regulations of education and society. Which is also the place Múm operates in.