December 28, 2022

Unknown Mortal Orchestra - "SB-10"


Unknown Mortal Orchestra are closing out the year with another installment of their annual ambient drones.

Typically, Unknown Mortal Orchestra is a band known for their expressive psych-pop that comes in technicolor waves of disco-lite jams and groove-induced tracks that feel cohesive while still branching out into new realms all within the pop universe. At times they're a bit jammy, but often they strive for perfect pop bliss and the result is usually met with general warmth from a fanbase looking to get lost in their cosmic webs of noodling guitar. However, for the past several years, they've released a standalone track that dives deeper into ambient textures and more free-form expressions that float along through prisms of spaced-out sparkles that go further into the jam band realms. This peaked in 2018 with their instrumental record IC-01 Hanoi, but the band has still offered-up one-off tracks in the years since. This time, they're back with their longest installment yet, a sprawling forty-minute-plus epic that once again finds the band distilling their tripped-out jams into long, moving sections full of distorted saxophone, mangled synths, and looping guitars. While the band has teased a double-album for next year that include's their recent single, "I Killed Captain Cook," and should be more in-line with what fans have come to expect, "SB-10" is a sprawling epic full of groovy melody and sporadic rhythm that finds them reaching further out into space.


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