Uma:
UMA:
Enraptured:
CD/DD:
June 2nd:
★★★★★★☆☆☆☆
As BBC 6 Music has rightfully observed recently, 'electronica' can be found everywhere these days. Synth-pop, dubstep, electro-rock and the first early throes of musique-concrete all display electronic tendencies, ensuring that the guitar-shredding, drum-bashing, bass-thumbing stalwarts don't always have it their own way when it comes to soulful creativity. Some of those stick-in-the-muds have, at some point, dabbled in keyboards or the digital dark-side at some point. Hello Def Leppard.
The Eighties spawned a resurgence in interest for all things synth and, successfully or otherwise, the legacy lives on today with thousands and thousands of keyboard-wielding hipsters, fops and genuinely talented geeks flooding the networks with varying results. Taking the '80s template under their collective wing and passing it through the melancholia blender is UMA, a married couple who got hitched, shacked up in Berlin (land of introspective synth-pop) and fused their creative nodes of thought into some semblance of music, the first fruits of which appeared on the minimal EP Drop Your Soul.
Now some two years later, we have a full album with a continuation of what has gone before, minus the guests. The opening song Depart is on a par with La Roux having a cuddle with Jon Hopkins (yep, 6 Music have aired it), Vanity recalls the day chill-wave became a term of pity and the more agreeable B1 takes elements of glitch and paranoia to make a somewhat primitive soundtrack to sleepless nights in a dank basement bedsit. Spread over an entire album, Ella and Florian's vocals soothe but the ideas run out just past the halfway mark, until the powerful curtain-call that is Roam brings things to a satisfying end - lovers of Dr Rhythm beat-boxes might enjoy the hi-hats set to stun.
Ultimately UMA's first opus isn't a run in the sun or your next shagging tape but the combination of blissed-out beats and eerie reclusive music might give you cause to investigate further.
UMA:
Enraptured:
CD/DD:
June 2nd:
★★★★★★☆☆☆☆
The Eighties spawned a resurgence in interest for all things synth and, successfully or otherwise, the legacy lives on today with thousands and thousands of keyboard-wielding hipsters, fops and genuinely talented geeks flooding the networks with varying results. Taking the '80s template under their collective wing and passing it through the melancholia blender is UMA, a married couple who got hitched, shacked up in Berlin (land of introspective synth-pop) and fused their creative nodes of thought into some semblance of music, the first fruits of which appeared on the minimal EP Drop Your Soul.
Now some two years later, we have a full album with a continuation of what has gone before, minus the guests. The opening song Depart is on a par with La Roux having a cuddle with Jon Hopkins (yep, 6 Music have aired it), Vanity recalls the day chill-wave became a term of pity and the more agreeable B1 takes elements of glitch and paranoia to make a somewhat primitive soundtrack to sleepless nights in a dank basement bedsit. Spread over an entire album, Ella and Florian's vocals soothe but the ideas run out just past the halfway mark, until the powerful curtain-call that is Roam brings things to a satisfying end - lovers of Dr Rhythm beat-boxes might enjoy the hi-hats set to stun.
Ultimately UMA's first opus isn't a run in the sun or your next shagging tape but the combination of blissed-out beats and eerie reclusive music might give you cause to investigate further.