Unknown Mortal Orchestra – V (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Unknown Mortal Orchestra – V (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:00:10 minutes | 1,25 GB | Genre: Indie Rock, Psychedelic Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Jagjaguwar

Created between Palm Springs, California and Hilo, Hawai’i, V is the first double album from the Hawaiian-New Zealand singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Ruban Nielson’s Unknown Mortal Orchestra band. Designed to play as one continuous movement and road-tested on dry California freeways, V is the definitive Unknown Mortal Orchestra car record. It’s also the fifth full-length album Ruban has released in twelve years. Across fourteen sunbleached songs – written solo or with his brother Kody – Ruban draws from the rich traditions of West Coast AOR, yacht rock, weirdo pop and Hawaiian Hapa-haole music. Over a laidback blend of singalong anthems and cinematic instrumentals, he evokes blue skies, afternoons spent lounging by hotel swimming pools and the alluring darkness that lurks below perfect, pristine surfaces. It’s a duality expressed in the dilapidated sunset blues and the salt corroded soul Ruban explores through tracks like ‘Layla’ and ‘Nadja. ’ During the pandemic’s early days, Ruban reunited with Kody at a cousin’s wedding in Hawai’i. With assistance from their father, Chris Nielson (saxophone/flute) and longstanding Unknown Mortal Orchestra member Jake Portrait, they brought everything Ruban had been thinking about together. The result was V, due for release on March 3, 2023, through Jagjaguwar. When they talked about records that moved them in that spine-shivering manner, Ruban started thinking about the 70s AM radio rock and 80s pop songs that had lurked on the edge of his subconscious mind for most of his life. He wanted to write his version of records like that, leading to the two glorious up tempo singles Unknown Mortal Orchestra released in 2021, ‘Weekend Run’ and ‘That Life’. However, the golden good times never last forever. Not long after, health issues began to plague his extended family. Putting his recordings aside, he helped his mother and his uncle move home from New Zealand and Portland to Hawai’i, and began dividing his time between Hawai’i and Palm Springs. During this period he reconnected with his relatives, reassessed his past, and started to look at things with fresh eyes. Hawai’i brought back memories of the darker side of his parents’ lifestyle as entertainers. On those trips, he heard those classic AM radio rock records everywhere. They were inextricably intertwined with the palm trees, swimming pools, and glamorized hedonism he’d internalized from his childhood. There’s a type of music in Hawai’i called Hapa-haole (Half white). You can hear it expressed in signature Unknown Mortal Orchestra style through the humid guitar-led atmosphere of V’s penultimate song, ‘I Killed Captain Cook’. Although the songs are presented in a traditional Hawaiian manner, they’re mostly sung in English. Having been influenced by Hawaiian music since Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s first album, Ruban saw a space for himself within the tradition. When he reflected on his success, he realized he had the responsibility and platform to represent Hapa-haole music on the global stage.

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Unknown Mortal Orchestra – Sex & Food (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Unknown Mortal Orchestra – Sex & Food (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 43:24 minutes | 453 MB | Genre: Rock, Lo-Fi, Psychedelic Rock, Indie Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Jagjaguwar

‘Sex & Food’ is a delightfully shapeshifting album that filters real-deal serious themes through a vibrant sonic lens that spans battered drum machine funk, doomy and thrashing rock and pinkhued psychedelic disco. Ever since they burst on the scene with blog-favourite ‘Ffunny FFriends’, Unknown Mortal Orchestra have wilfully proved themselves ready to wrong-foot all of us at each turn. Led by New Zealand’s Ruban Nielson, they followed up on that buzzy single with a fully-formed, self-titled debut in 2011 that proved the hype was well placed. Next, ‘II‘, saw them dabble with a mainstream sound while keeping their sound firmly rooted in their scuzzy origins, and 2015’s ‘Multi-Love’ was a glorious psychedelic romp through Prince-tinged pop. It seemed only natural for them to continue boogie-ing towards the dancefloor and build on ‘Multi-Love”s dancier elements.

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Unknown Mortal Orchestra – IC-01 Hanoi (2018) [Official Digital Download 24bit/44,1kHz]

Unknown Mortal Orchestra – IC-01 Hanoi (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 28:13 minutes | 297 MB | Genre: Rock, Psychedelic Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Jagjaguwar

While recording Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s latest release, Sex & Food, Ruban Nielson, his longtime collaborator Jacob Portrait and his brother Kody Nielson, found themselves in the Vietnamese city of Hanoi playing and recording with local musicians at Phu Sa Studios. The studio, normally used for traditional Vietnamese music, found the band jamming on sessions dubbed IC-01 Hanoi: exploring the outer edges of the band’s influences in Jazz, Fusion and the avant-garde. The musicians, along with Ruban and Kody’s father, a Jazz musician in his own right, helped lay down the unique textures heard throughout Hanoi. At its core Hanoi is a record of exploration, finding its closest antecedent in Miles Davis’ experimental On The Corner – itself a record full of nods toward avant-garde composers and Jazz outsiders alike. Hanoi finds Ruban amplifying and stretching out on lead guitar, with a blown-out and wandering fuzz tone that slinks throughout the sessions. Kody and Jacob match Ruban’s melodic diversions with aplomb, mining their talents to finding as easy a role in the fusion of funk as they do in the more ambient and abstract tangents on Hanoi.

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