Electronic music project Ümlaut is set to release a new album titled “Same But Different” (Audiobulb Records, 2023) on April 15th, 2023. Jeff Düngfelder, an American avant-garde musician and sound artist, is known as Ümlaut. Currently residing in the rural area of northern Connecticut, his artistic themes are centered on emptiness and quietness, the unexplainable connection between observer and visual art, and fleeting instances of tranquility amidst an ever-changing environment.
Employing a stripped-down, electroacoustic style, his elusive medley of captured environmental sounds and electronic instrumentation combines with the realm of dimness and hues. With a minimalist approach, Ümlaut’s work invites limitless possibilities for interpretation, allowing the audience’s imagination to bridge the gaps between the grainy textures of soundscapes and elements of ambient, musique concrète, and noise. By juxtaposing spaciousness with a sense of intimacy, he has established a distinctive musical idiom that combines experimental ambiance with introspection. Through his sonic remembrances, he exposes the intricate correlation between music and silence.
Jeff Düngfelder describes the project: “In Japanese, Yūgen signifies “a profound, mysterious sense of the beauty of the universe… and the sad beauty of human suffering.” Yūgen suggests that which is beyond what can be said, but not as an allusion to another world. It is about this world, about this experience. The album cover and musical tracks were inspired by a piece of art that hangs in my bedroom. For weeks, as I lay on my back after surgery, I looked at the painting every day. It became a sort of meditative practice.
“Up until my recuperation, the meaning of the painting had eluded me. But over time, a closer focus on the artwork brought forth a revelation. The painting was about being reborn. New life, with no attachment to the past and no expectation of the future. A profound liberation of the spirit overtook me. Electronic sparks, intonations, chords, arrhythmic percussion, chimes, and whooshes of sound free floated through my imagination… and “same but different” was born.”
Jeff Düngfelder: Electronics
Recorded in Weatogue, Connecticut
Cover art painting by Sue Z Smith
Available from ab-umlaut.bandcamp.com/album/same-but-different