UMA – Vanity

It’s deceptively quiet, under the radar music that heralds (I bloody hope) a great LP from this German duo.

It’s deceptively quiet, under the radar music that heralds (I bloody hope) a great LP from this German duo.

 

http://seayou.bandcamp.com/album/uma-vanity

UMA, new LP in the offing, give us this, their new single, Vanity. Replete with two brooding remixes. Now I know Incendiary says it doesn’t review singles, we really don’t, honestly don’t review singles, and we HATE all that “promote this single/video/link on your blog” BULLSHIT that promotional dudes sat in a back bedroom in their underpants pretending to be PR companies continuously send us. Incendiary is not a machine. We’re not part of the industry or zeitgeist, nor wanting to be. We’re just two or three people who write about music in their spare time.

Where was I? Oh yes, this single. Now, regardless of what I say above, this is worth a quick piece on.  It’s deceptively quiet, under the radar music that heralds (I bloody hope) a great LP from this German duo. They already made one single (a year ago I think) Drop Your Soul, which was equally fabulous and spaced out. UMA have this presence that is at once incredibly poppy and assured and also just floating off somewhere in outer space. It’s almost as if they have control on what not to do, and that their music is created by a series of eliminations.  The single proper is a sort of nursery pop, soulfully marrying an eerie vocal line (that gets quietly choral) with sparse early 80 synth wobbles and bleeps. Nothing is out of place. The remixes are darker, and open up vast and dark hinterlands behind the neat and tidy original; and mess with that soulful vibe that UMA possess (though to be honest the better, more “pushy” one one is the BIBLO remix).

Smart music. You may think, hmm, I don’t hear this, but stick in there and their calm, considered weirdness will win you over. There’s something about UMA that is magic.