Monde UFO

On their latest outing Monde UFO feel both more aligned with pop and more outre than ever. More propulsive than their celebrated previous album, Flamingo Tower, spends less time bouncing between the poles of folk and dub, but in its shift it leaves smudges all over pop’s template. When the band locks into the strings and swing of “Samba 9” the vocals dive into the fuzz, dipping the song’s lush trappings in a vat of paint thinner. Corrosion seems to be a prevailing theme on the record, underscored by a pseudo-religious lyricism that adds a cultishness to their shrouded offerings. The record grabs genres with open arms, swung on hypnotic hues of bossa nova and draped with the trappings of lounge. The band refuses to commit to either of these, though, often letting a comfortably strung groove get torn apart by strains of psychedelic jazz or buffed brittle by a nice sandpapering of noise.

The occult incarnations of the vocal numbers are broken up by a run of instrumentals that serve less as connective tissue than as alternate dimension escapades into library and film music. The pieces feel caught in the b-movie excesses of Jean-Bernard Raiteux or Jean Rollin, slinking and stalking through the night with spectral sensuality. The whole album has the feel of a cinema in silhouette — murky outlines only hinting at the depths of the band’s meanings and manifestations. On Flamingo Tower the band prove there’s no need to play it straight. They hook listeners with snippets of pop, shiny lures that drag the listener into an underground wonderland of fuzz, froth, decadence, and degradation.

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