Electric Mud, the project started in 2011 by Hagen Bretschneider and Nico Walser originally released Lost Places in 2022 but have now added five tracks to the six which first appeared. This review will concentrate on all tracks and treat them as a new work. Before I commence with the words and music, a recommendation that you take yourselves over to the Bandcamp page at https://electricmud.bandcamp.com/ and I hope my review of the most excellent last album, The Inner World Outside at https://lazland.org/album-reviews-2022/electric-mud-the-inner-world-outside can tempt you. The cover for the new album, incidentally, continues the fine set of works we see from them.
It is, I believe, one of the most difficult feats for a band to pull off to add tracks which didn’t make it onto an original release and maintain, or even enhance, the quality of what went before. It is one of the main reasons that I shy away from most boxsets which have a plethora of “previously unreleased” studio pieces. So, how have they done?
We have eleven tracks to enjoy. First up is Bounce House, and if you pardon the pun, it is decidedly bouncy, a funky groove featuring first a top-rate guitar riff before some screeching keys transport you to somewhere akin to the coolest nightclub in your locality. At two minutes, we get a quiet interlude before the opening trance reasserts itself. A track which almost defies any realistic descriptor, and that is always a huge plus here.
Metamorph Diaries was the opener on the original release, and I believe it relates to those mythical creatures who change their shape, plentiful in ancient and medieval storytelling. I have embedded this fascinating and mysterious piece of music below. Enjoy the pulsing opening sequence which segues into a ghostly top-notch guitar solo from Walser alongside some class acoustic guitar and fascinating programming, the transformational noises especially interesting.
Flood could not possibly be more different. It is the second of the new tracks and has a bright and sunny opening reminding me of Barclay James Harvest, and, in fact, the vocals aren’t a million miles away. A rather lovely expansive symphonic delight of a track with a fine distorted guitar solo all underpinned by a melodic Bretschneider bass.
Last File of the Digital Nomad is up next, a shorter fascinating piece, an electronica curiosity, very dreamy, but the guitar infused with Latimer sensibilities. I have embedded it below.
Timos Lost Weekend is the next new piece and has the joys of the bass guitar played as a lead instrument before we get the most delightful dirty keyboards leading the charge into a heavier piece of music, the programming especially impressive amongst the voice which oozes hedonism and the art of forgetting the good time which was had. Extremely impressive in its execution, this track is simply a manifestation of the joy of living.
What follows is the finest song title you will see in 2024, or, indeed, most other years – Giant Kraut Chromosome. It is the only epic here, a second shy of twelve minutes. It starts like a crackled old vinyl record, with some guttural noises led by a bass sliding up and down the scale, and I picture an abandoned industrial wasteland when I listen to this, wanderers opening long rusted doors and gates, a deep sense of foreboding entrenched, especially when the animal noises can be heard. Just over halfway through, something more recognisable as a song emerges, with voices counting down in a loop underneath the synths and guitars which are deeply trancelike, mesmerising, in fact before a final third which starts as dystopian as it comes before settling back into a watery wasteland, lonely percussion the only human noise left. This is not a track you will play your other half on an early date hoping for some sexual pleasure, that’s for sure, but it is a track which rewards patience and repeated listens, as clever a piece of alternative rock you are likely to hear this year.
It is followed by Electric Magma, another new piece featuring a homage to space classics of film as it opens before an electronic piece of boogie-woogie follows. Great fun and annoyingly catchy.
Empress of the Last Days to begin with has that sense of an apocalyptic event, the effects providing the wait for a hammer to fall, but within it, there is some beauty and eastern mystery which opens up with a promise of spring, a defiance against the darkness which preceded it, and this orchestral delight is a highlight of the year for me.
Anthony follows this, the eponymous subject seeing the writer every day, but now gone in what sounds like a cathartic elegy written for someone very close. Understated and sadly pretty, with a strong bass undertone, touching acoustic guitar, and sparse keys, this is a song which could very easily sit on any work by the likes of Anthony Phillips, the final couple of minutes filling your head with quiet noise and ethereal majesty.
The penultimate piece is A Digital Phantom; The Plus in 0+1, another contender for title of the year here. It is the second longest piece at just short of nine minutes, opening with more of those disconcerting noises, wet and threatening to these ears, realised by bursts of electronic notes and clattering percussion. A third of the way in, the mood shifts to the machinery playing with the senses, before the more spartan mood returns and closes with a digital storm. This is another extremely challenging listen.
We finish with Durance – first draft. This is embedded below, a fine example of the band’s melodic and symphonic side, a rather gorgeous little piece which I believe celebrates the flow of the French river.
As with The Inner World Outside review comments I made, what makes Electric Mud so special is the ability to create moods in their soundscapes. It is probably clear to readers of this review that there is much here that is not immediately comfortable to listen to, and that is stated as a positive. It is challenging, almost as if the protagonists are, in fact, challenging you to sit down, listen, take in in, and then start again, repeat, because it does not reveal itself until you do. Hence why it has taken a wee while for me to put fingers to keyboard. Once you admit yourself to that inner musical circle, though, it is rewarding. It allows the listener to take multiple threads and create his/her own narrative within an arc which defies simplism in its categorisation.
Highly recommended.