Reviews
[Alternative Press] [Auf Abwegen]
[Bizarre] [C & D
Services] [Creative Loafing] [Dead
Angel] [Digital Artifact] [Earpollution]
[Exclaim!] [Improvijazzation
Nation] [The Rocket] [Outburn]
[Vital Weekly]
- Alternative
Press - June, 2000
(rated 4 out of 5) Esoteric, trippy mind journeys in the
manner of the Orb.
Dunno who or what Kobalt 6 is, but M'lumbo are a trio of talented
musical jokers aided by various guest musicians and hangers-on,
who are more interested in challenging themselves than in reaching
a mass audience. Previous releases have offered wacky interpretations
of movie and TV themes, played with a vaguely free-jazz/world-beat
orientation, but on this Spinning Tourists In A City Of
Ghosts, M'lumbo jump headfirst into sampling and studio
wizardry, moving obliquely in various directions and often
sounding a lot like the Orb in their most mind-expanding incarnation.
The seven generously proportioned pieces on the CD are loosely
stitched together with vocal loops, music samples, nature sounds,
drones and the riff-oriented playing of the trio and guests,
who can be heard on muted trumpet, sax, guitar, bass, keyboards,
and percussion - generally laying down a skewed but urbane
jazz-funk goove with occaisional ethnic overtones (sitar, hand
percussion, etc) Sometimes, as on the long and sprawling "Soul
Exchange," the thread gets lost, and the vision quest
threatens to degenerate into a disjointed fever dream. Elsewhere,
though, an overall shape is at least hinted at, or a direction
maintained, or an atmosphere sustained - which makes most of
the aural journeys on this CD well worth listening. - Bill
Tilland - Auf
Abwegen - Issue #29
- (joint review with Retro AKA)
Gäbe es eine Rubrik "Platten, die wir nicht verstanden
haben", so würde M'lubos Clash mit Kobalt 6 garantiert
darunter fallen. Noch wohlig in Erinnerung mit einer Insektenablauschscheibe
auf Staalplaats God Factory-Sublabel klingt die Combo auf vorliegender
Scheibe nun plötzlich von allen guten Geistern verlassen.
Die Musik macht den Anschein, als hätten sich 30 Personen
in einem Proberaum eigenschlossen, mit den Ziel eine Band zu
gründen. Das Problem ist, daß jeder seine stilistischen
Vorlieben einbringen will. Entsprechend wird auf Spinning Tourists...
zu viel in zu kurzer Zeit zusammengewurslet: schmalziger Ambient-Wutsch,
knistriges Experiment, döselige Spoken Word Parts und
grauslige Beats. Hier gilt das alte amerikanische Sprichwort:
zu viele Köche..., naja ihr wißt schon....
- Bizarre - #12
Following on from an album of covers of TV Theme Songs, done
in avant-jazz style, comes this 'Eno'/'Talking Heads' sounding
album title, which has taken on board electronica, ambient
and world beats.
They are a shifting collective of New York Musicians who are
difficult to label. Melding tribal rhythms and break beats,
cut-ups and electronic ambiences, they sound like a polished
earlier - 'Cabaret Voltaire'.
Shifting from dance orientated to soundscape mixing in Kitsch
and exotica along the way, producing a dream-like travelogue.
Restless like the planet and the modern cosmopolitan urban
environment. - Creative
Loafing - 2/5/00 (joint review with Vas Deferns Oganization)
It's easy to imagine the musical shapes on these discs were
created by fringe groups of drug-munching basement-dwellers,
existing just outside the glare of popular culture. They probably
feed sounds and samples into their computers and tape machines
with abandon, mixing them down with a method that doesn't easily
reveal itself. The results are collages, as inviting as they
are forbodding, that would nicely compliment any William Burroughs-inspired
evening.
...
M'lumbo (with their visual cohort Kobalt 6), on the other hand,
are like a cabal of eccentric Kabbalists, trying to map sonic
in-routes to untapped mental regions. Like VDO, it's cut 'n'
paste time in the freak factory. But M'lumbo's fluid procedure
gives the listener room to stop and take inventory from time
to time. Spinning Tourists is like a frenzied version
of Paul Schutze's cinematic Deus Ex Machina: impelling
yet somehow calming, and almost always in control. - Mitchell
Foy - Digital
Artifact - Issue #14
- Like a twisting, non-linear progression of sound, comes the
latest work of M'lumbo and Kobalt 6 entitled "Spinning
Tourists in a City of Ghosts", an enigmatically appealing,
chaotically rhythmic experimentalist's vision of a Utopian
world. M'lumbo's sound, characteristic of previous releases
via Staalplaat, combines elements of jazz, African tribal percussion,
obscure sampling, and a wide array of normal, everyday sounds
taken slightly out of context to produce a soundscape tapestry
that confuses, distorts, entices, and beckons one's train of
thought. The overall aura to tracks like "The Secret of
Fear" and "Playing at Random"
echo shifting shades of lightness to darkness and vice-versa,
unveiling the complex, technical inner structure of the music.
What is offered is a larger in-depth look into the minds of
visionary sound sculptors M'lumbo - Art
- The Rocket, January 26th
Issue
- Ambient droning, improvisational collage noise, avant jazz
and electronic rhythm, M'lumbo's latest offers a heady mix
that's hard to pin down. With a splash of funky rhythms in
the middle of "The Secret of Fear" and "Sprawling
Mausoleums" as well as tribal beats in several tracks
including "Call This Number Now and Change Your Life Forever" and
you really have a strange brew. The seven tracks, most of them
in the 10-minute range, might be considered sprawling, cluttered
and unfocused, at times a slurry of improvised electro-noise,
but then a wonderfully noir-ish trumpet riff soars through
the fog to create a breath-taking juxtaposition. Added to this
are some looped and distorted found-vocal snippets, often in
the wacko-religious or sci-fi vein, that also help keep the
album coherent and fascinating. Dark and hallucinatory, but
with a loose improv feel, Spinning Tourists sounds like
what the phrase acid jazz conjures up more than any of the
music that conventionally falls under that label.
- C & D Services
- Imagine a collision between Tackhead, Eno-era Talking Heads,
Bill Laswell, mid- '70's Miles Davis, a bit of drum 'n' bass,
and you're a bit close to the whole spirit and feel of this
unique album, to which mere words cannot even begin to do justice
to convey the musical constructions that you are going to hear
on this album. Even as a giant musical cooking pot, it will
exceed your wildest imaginations, using samples, western drums,
African drums, fusion guitar, electronics, electronic drums,
electric bass, wind instruments, clattering percussion, synth
bursts, more samples, trumpet and more, in a series of 10 tracks
in over seventy minutes. The whole thing is so totally mind-boggling,
it can safely be said that you've never heard anything like
this before. It's a musical experience like no other and you
are so struck by it, that you listen to the whole thing whether
you intended to do so or not. It's so new, refreshing that
you consistently find new things in the mix and new ways of
enjoying it every time you play it. Contemporary music never
sounded so good or so unique and you cannot fault this album.
- Andy G.
- Dead Angel - Issue #40
- M'lumbo is a very strange band. Outside of their hard-to-peg
sound -- they essentially hopscotch wildly from genres as disparate
as jazz, world beat, swing, music concrete, psychedelic, and
electronica (sort of) -- they have a peculiar sense of humor,
as evidenced by the fact that apparently this is actually just
M'lumbo (if there really is a Kobalt 6, it's not made evident
in the press thingy or the liner notes, although mention is
made of a forthcoming video with the same title as the album).
The first track, "Science Headquarters," makes their
mission fairly explicit: to slice and dice as many genres as
possible into a seamless stew of sound. Against a backdrop
of distorted dialogue and found sound, they move from jazz
to to swing to world beat and back, occasionally dropping into
jungle mode while playing cocktail jazz over the top. Strange,
disorienting stuff with a holistic approach to songwriting
(in other words, if it has notes they play it, regardless of
what genre the notes actually came from). That it works at
all is a minor miracle -- crosshatching genres is tougher than
it looks -- and the fact that it works well is a testament
to their formidable instrumental skills. This same tack of
style-hopping continues, in a slower and more subdued vein,
in "The Soul Exchange," sounding mainly like a world-beat
track overlaid with music concrete. By the time "The Secret
of Fear" and "Playing at Random" have played
through, with much the same strategy, it becomes obvious that
this is all intended to evoke a mood rather an a specific response
-- it all sounds like the soundtrack to an imaginary (or, if
the liner notes are to be believed, maybe not so imaginary
after all) film. Found sounds are far more predominant than
actual music in "Call This Number Now and Change Your
Life Forever" -- the music is there, but it's clearly
subordinate to the other material, which is an interesting
approach. Noisy music concrete continues to be the norm for
the first few minutes of "Sprawling Masoleums," until
an erratic technobeat begins to crop up, augmented by world
beat and the occasional jazzy noodling. The effect is much
like wandering through a crowded city street where different
forms of music play on every block, soaking up conversations
and snatches of music while constantly on the move.They incorporate
new elements of drone into the final track, "All You Have
To Do Is Relax and Listen (and Let Your Subconscious Do the
Rest)" -- a retreat into minimalism of sorts (or at least
more minimal, anyway); the drone gives way to heartbeat sounds
and eventually the drone returns, along with occasional beats,
while the dialogue and found sound mutter on constantly in
the background. All of this imaginary soundtrack stuff makes
me wonder what the actual film looks like. Recommended for
those who have always tried to imagine what ambient and music
concrete would sound like together. -RKF
- Earpollution - January, 2000
- To listen to M'lumbo is to tap into the psychic history of
the building where you live. There are echoes of old television
shows still blaring out windows opened to the hot summer winds,
of older steam pipes still knocking and gasping beneath your
feet, of voices indistinct and muffled through decades of paint
and plaster. Decrepit telephones ring in the distance. Radio
announcers try to sell you products which haven't existed for
over twenty years. Water drips in your basin and the floorboards
in the hall creak with the passage of lame ghosts. Through
this seeming cacophony wanders the haunted specters of old
jazz men--trumpet players and saxophone crooners--lisping melodies
lost since Prohibition. An old Victrola that has been lovingly
kept is wheezing down the hall, its needle stuck near the inner
edge of an extinct 78. Wind, lost and confused, gets caught
in the ancient weathervane on the roof and keens endlessly
for its freedom. And M'lumbo, through whatever arcane arts
they have managed to teach themselves, add just a breath of
a beat; just enough to give all these phantoms something to
latch onto. Suddenly, you can hear the naturally majestic music
that lives and grows year after year in the walls, in the very
breath of your city. - Mark Teppo
- Exclaim! -
February 2000
- M'Lumbo are a trio of experimental audio artists from NYC
who create a mind boggling sound collage, with their blend
jazz, world rhythms and electronic effects. On their release,
Spinning Tourists..., they create an environment full of bizarre
samples and soundscapes that cannot be pinned into any of the
multitude of genres they employ. The opening track, "Science
Headquarters,"
blends dark and distorted vocal samples, tribal drums, drum & bass
and jazz trumpet to conjure an image of mad science gone freakishly
wrong. On "Call this Number and Change Your Life Forever," the
mood becomes less frantic but equally challenging, sampling
a vast array of mutated word blips over an ambient backdrop.
The mood continues on "Sprawling Masoleums," where
hundreds of spirits speak at once over electro-breakbeats,
jazz guitar noodling and techno bleeps. This album challenges
the listener to comprehend the multitude of parts that make
up its whole but at times, it becomes schizophrenic and difficult
to decipher, kind of like an acid trip - exciting, terrifying
and incomprehensible. - Marc Roy
- Improvijazzation Nation - Issue
#39
- 'nother shining release in from Unit Circle Rekkids. You'll
BELIEVE in ghosts by th' time this conglomeration of high-mix
electronic insanity (if you DON'T, you're probably PART of
M'lumbo)! "The Secret Of Fear" will have yer' ticker
twangin', verzure! Those who want nice
"chamber music" sort o' predictability will go elsewhere,
but if yer' lookin' for somethin' DIFFERENT, GET this! It gets
a MOST HIGHLY RECOMMENDED from me. UCR takes us into thee 21st
with scads of style on this one! - Rotcod Zzaj
- Outburn -
Issue #11
- :OVER THE EDGE EXPERIMENTAL: M'lumbo gained a signficant
amount of press and praise in the early 90's for their avant-jazz
interpretations of TV theme songs on several albums. Now this
three man group of truly wacky individuals, has released a
seven track experimental album drawing upon sound collage,
jazz, electronica, ambient and world beat. Spinning Tourists
in a City of Ghosts opens with one of the oddest songs
I have ever heard, "Science Headquarters." Complete
with jazz horns, soulful keyboards, breakbeats, synths, distorted
deep mumbling vocals, percussion, electronics, and numerous
other instruments all assembled in a chaotic fashion, M'lumbo
demonstrate that they are experimental to the extreme. "The
Soul Exchange" opens with a soothing blend of female voices,
a deep voice repeating "the soul exchange,"
acoustic guitars, and synths which slowly mutates into a gentle
barrage of different voices that become more random as this
song progresses. One of my favorite tracks, "Sprawling
Mausoleums" transforms from dark droning with odd vocal
samples to upbeat and dancey with techno elements and a vaguely
familiar ambiance. The song winds down into a relaxed state
then shifts again to upbeat and finally comes to a screeching
halt. The other songs include "Playing at Random," which
is oddly enough one of the two least random songs on the album, "Call
This Number Now and Change Your Life Forever" with a tongue
in cheek attitude, and "The Secret of Fear" with
creepy undertones. The final track poses the suggestion, "All
You Have To Do Is Relax and Listen (And Let Your Subconscious
Do the Rest)," but the real question is, do you really
want to let M'lumbo into your subconscious? M'lumbo's music
may be difficult with their unexpected transitions, unusal
styles, and chaotic compositions, but their abstract, thought
provoking songs do grow on you, M'lumbo is a unique experience
that could prove itself well woeth the effort with underlying
themes and emotions to discover amidst the chaos. - Octavia
- Vital
Weekly - Issue 208
- Combining jazz, easy listening, afro, dance and collage seems
unlikely, maybe even impossible. But let me tell you it's not.
M'lumbo do it without so much as a frown. Instruments are played
with obvious ease, snippets of film sounds have been cut appropriately,
samples taken with care, and all this mixed with pleasure into
an orgy of postmodern delight (although they seem to lose track
every now and then). This is weird stuff for weird people (no
drugs needed!). Have fun with your guests! (MR)
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