So far, no one seems to be able to come up with a name for it -- and that's probably a good thing. For the time being, some of us just call it indie-electronic music.
The Sound of One Hand Clapping: Iceland's
other "It" band.
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What the designation refers to is the fusion of two sounds that were initially distinct from one another. Decades ago, while bands like Sonic Youth were carving out the sound of indie music, bands like Kraftwerk were forging the sound of electronica. One sound became the stuff of dormitories, of late nights spent crying on girlfriends' shoulders, and of a certain set of mostly college-educated, mostly corduroy pantswearing individuals with a preference for books, beer, and thick, black-framed glasses. The other went on to soundtrack all-night, drug-fueled dance parties, its arpeggiated synth lines and dense washes of electrified warmth spreading to the most remote regions of the Earth, so that now you can go to Nepal, hike three days into the mountains, and still find a full-moon party on a remote lake where DJs are spinning trance music (this is true). One sound became synonymous with introspective, manic-depressive, self-absorbed "thinkers," the other with impulse-driven Dionysian "doers." They couldn't have been more disparate if they tried.
But I like to think that the members of múm (pronounced "moom") -- Gunnar Örn Tynes, Örvar Póreyjarson Smárason, and twin sisters Gyda and Kristín Anna Valtysdóttir, all of them multi-instrumentalists -- don't know anything about that dichotomy. You see, múm is from Iceland, the territory of both Björk and Sigur Rós, two acts whose recorded output is all the evidence you need that divine inspiration still exists in music (OK, 50 Cent counts, too). What I prefer to believe about those bands -- which is what I believe about the members of múm -- is that their homeland is nothing less than a magical realm of fairies and pixies, that it's like Peter Pan's Never-Never Land, only colder, connected to the world yet isolated from it, so that any instance of divine musicianship (my name for it) is informed by more mystical sources, not the desire to experiment for the sake of "doing something different," i.e., blending disparate genres.
Nevertheless, múm's music is the epitome of indie-electronic. It is at once organic and synthetic, cerebral and transcendent, acoustic and electric. To create its songs, the band fuses computer-crafted glitches and beats with warm, misty vocals, creative percussion, and a host of pianos, guitars, accordions, cellos, and other live instruments, some fabricated by the band. It's as if no one ever told múm about the divisions between the indie and electronic genres, which seems quite possible: This band creates its music literally in the middle of nowhere: a lighthouse, 10 hours by car from Reykjavík and another 40-minute boat ride away from the next closest town, which has, Tynes estimates, about 150 people in it. Like a child raised by wolves, múm's self-imposed isolation has fostered both a certain immaturity and a certain wisdom, and that rare combination, embodied most endearingly in the child prodigy, is what makes the band's gorgeous, pillow-soft music the stuff of genius.
The origins of múm go back about six years to when Tynes and Smárason were playing in a rock band together in Reykjavík. Influenced by Aphex Twin's seminal album Selected Ambient Works '85-'92 -- arguably the foundation on which all indie-electronic music now stands -- the duo started experimenting with electronic textures and sounds. When a mutual friend of theirs needed someone to compose music for his play, he called upon Tynes and Smárason. It was while working on the play that they met the twins.
"They were in the theater group," says Tynes, speaking in a thick Nordic accent from a tour stop in New York City, "and when we came in and asked for people who could play certain instruments, they played those instruments, and, you know, we clicked together."
While electronic equipment was scarce in Iceland, the band members managed to get by with whatever gear they could lay their hands on, items such as an old Wurlitzer piano, which Tynes discovered in his school's basement. It was this kind of resourcefulness that resulted in the motley textures within the band's music, sounds like that of a children's toy piano, a vocoder, sometimes even pots and pans.
In 2000, the group debuted its creations with Yesterday Was Dramatic -- Today Is Okay, which was widely praised by the IDM (intelligent dance music) and indie rock circles (both of which came to it due to the success of múm's countrymen, Sigur Rós). IDM fans were fascinated by the unique aesthetic the four musicians manufactured by digitally processing acoustic sounds. Indie rock fans were struck by the curious, sentimental manner in which the group somehow anthropomorphized those sounds: Spindly electronic melodies mingled together like giggles; rhythms felt like children rolling down a hill.
"It wasn't [múm's] production techniques that intrigued me," says Jimmy Tambrello, songwriter and programmer for the indie-electronic supergroup the Postal Service. "It was more the personality of the music, a really perfect balance of melancholy and playfulness."
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