Posts Tagged ‘Robin Guthrie’

Dream Poppers Ummagma launch crowdfunding initiative for new LP ‘Compass’

Posted: 2 December 2017 in Previews and Editorial
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Alex Kretov and Shauna McLarnon are Ummagma. We like their dreamy brand of shoegazey pop here at Aural Aggro.

Since their inception in 2003, the duo have given birth to 3 albums (2 from Ummagma and 1 collaboration with Sounds of Sputnik), 4 EPs, many videos and remixes, as well as one awesome daughter (now 11 years old). ‘Music continues to be the glue that keeps us together, providing us symmetry and fuelling our dream machine’, they write.

In the past few years, they’ve worked with some really amazing producers and musicians – genuine icons in the field of dream pop and shoegaze – including Dean Garcia (CURVE and SPC ECO), Robin Guthrie (Cocteau Twins), Rudy Tambala (A.R.Kane, M/A/R/R/S), Malcolm Holmes (Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark), and Graham Bonnar (Swervedriver, BJM).

Compass finds them back out on their own: ‘Once again, we return to this fine place of equilibrium for this album, which will feature 12 original tracks’.

Compass has been five years in the making,  and their Indiegogo campaign has stacks of packages – which start from a credit for just a dollar. You can chip in here.

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Ummagma

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Ummagma Band

Ummagma – LCD EP

Posted: 28 September 2017 in Singles and EPs
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22nd September 2017

Christopher Nosnibor

Ummagma really do have some impressive friends and fans. The Canadian dreampop duo’s lush, textured shoegaze has garnered them not only and admirable fanbase and favourable critical reception, but has placed them into direct contact and collaboration with a number of their heroes.

The ‘LCD’ EP, which follows up their ‘Winter Tale’ maxi-single with 4AD dream pop pioneer A.R.Kane earlier this year, features four tracks, including the new original title track ‘LCD’, and reworkings of Ummagma songs two legendary British musical figures in the form of Cocteau Twin Robin Guthrie, and Dean Garcia of Curve and, latterly, SPC ECO.

The lead track is a classic slice of 90s-tinged dreampop with tangents ago-go: a slippery funk-infused groove envelops what sounds like two independent drum tracks which interlace and intertwine, while synths bubble and grind. It all comes together to create something strangely nebulous and at the same time compellingly propulsive despite its lack of obvious form.

Dean Garcia’s SPC ECO mix really accentuates the spaciness of the track, stripping it back to a sparse frame around which echoed notes and voices drift. Gloopy beats reverberate around dripping synths and elongated drones to conjure a rich atmosphere. Garcia takes a similar approach to the minimal drift of ‘Back to You’, which takes a turn for the darker as its resonant bass tones hang in a rarefied air, cloud-like and barely tangible yet present.

What Robin Guthrie brings to ‘Lama’, which originally featured on their debut album, is a real sense of appreciation of the original, and an accentuation of the nuance. He also provides not only a new arrangement and mix, but additional guitar work, which renders it more of a collaborative piece than a straight remix. There’s something magically organic about it, and as Shauna McLarnon’s soaring vocal tops off the sonic soufflé perfectly.

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Ummagma – LCD EP