Unknown Mortal Orchestra
Ic-01 Hanoi
While recording Unknown Mortal Orchestra's 'Sex & Food', Ruban Nielson, his longtime collaborator Jacob Portrait and his brother Kody Nielson, found themselves in the Vietnamese city of Hanoi playing and recording with local musicians at Phu Sa Studios. The studio, normally used for traditional Vietnamese music, found the band jamming on sessions dubbed 'IC-01 Hanoi': exploring the outer edges of the band's influences in jazz, fusion and the avant-garde. The musicians, along with Ruban and Kody's father, a jazz musician in his own right, helped lay down the unique textures heard throughout 'Hanoi'. At its core 'Hanoi' is a record of exploration, finding its closest antecedent in Miles Davis' experimental 'On The Corner' - itself a record full of nods toward avant-garde composers and jazz outsiders alike. 'Hanoi' finds Ruban amplifying and stretching out on lead guitar, with a blown-out and wandering fuzz tone that slinks throughout the sessions. Kody and Jacob match Ruban's melodic diversions with aplomb, mining their talents to finding as easy a role in the fusion of funk as they do in the more ambient and abstract tangents on 'Hanoi'.