Over the past decade and a half, Unknown Mortal Orchestra conductor Ruban Nielson has often resembled two different artists wrestling for control over the same soul. He’s a savvy pop synthesist who stands as one of his generation’s most reliable purveyors of vibed-out indie streamcore, but he’s also a restless musical nomad drawn to free-flowing exploration that steers clear of the algorithm. Initially, the latter facet surfaced primarily through UMO’s live performances, where modest three-minute tunes are liable to get stretched into shred-tastic seven-minute psychedelic odysseys. But it’s best captured by UMO’s IC (Improvisation/Collaboration) album series, launched in 2018 as a means to venture deeper into foreign territory—both figuratively and literally—by capturing extended instrumental jam sessions in far-flung cities with local musicians in tow.
If the inaugural IC entry, Hanoi, largely centred Ruban’s Hendrixian guitar pyrotechnics, the second installment feels like a more holistic, 360-degree representation of the band’s capabilities. Recorded in the namesake Colombian city, Bogotá sees Ruban flanked by a familiar cast of long-time UMO associates—drummer/brother Kody, saxophonist/father Chris, and bassist/guitarist Jacob Portrait—as they welcome recently recruited keyboardist Christian Li and guest percussionist Jose David Infante into the fold. Ruban’s singing voice is once again absent from these IC proceedings, but so too is his preferred mode of nonverbal communication: The record contains not a single spotlight-seizing guitar solo, putting the focus instead on Li and the elder Nielson's virtuosity. And where Hanoi drifted toward jazzy abstraction, Bogotá sees the band run wild over a much sturdier foundation of gritty grooves and DIY basement-club beats.
Even though Unknown Mortal Orchestra outgrew its home-recording roots long ago to become the sort of globetrotting entity liable to record a single album across four continents, their work has largely retained a hermetic quality. But Bogotá taps into the energy that teems on the streets outside the studio walls, vividly and viscerally channelling the nervous excitement of wandering through a new city at night as the bars start to fill up with Friday-evening revellers, drinks of dubious nature get passed around, and the streetlights start to blur into luminous streaks. Eleven-minute opener “Earth 1” wastes no time thrusting you into the melee, with a relentless percussive pulse and a circular flute refrain like a traffic whistle, clearing a path for Li to work his magic on electric piano. But after four solid minutes of cosmic keyboard wanderlust, Li introduces a repeating riff that locks into the main groove with puzzle-piece precision, transmuting the track’s frenetic bustle into zen-state bliss.
Each of Bogotá’s eight tracks has a terrestrial/celestial title—“Earth,” “Heaven,” and “Underworld”—and a corresponding number. Despite these groupings, however, the album has the randomized flow of a mixtape. And unlike the more open-ended (de)compositions of Hanoi, you could easily imagine a handful of Bogotá tracks being molded into proper UMO songs, like the Stereolabby cocktail-hour cruiser “Heaven 7” or the pawn-shop house of “Earth 5,” which sounds like “Music Sounds Better With You” if it was recorded by William Onyeabor. The slinky funk of “Earth 2” even comes equipped with an indecipherable scratch vocal just begging for one of Ruban’s honeyed hooks to be laid over top.
But true to its passport-stamping premise, Bogotá is most illuminating when it’s heading to unexpected places—like on “Earth 3,” where the fusion of jittery drum-machine beats, overlapping lo-fi synths, and wandering sax lines bust open a space/time portal connecting Cologne to Lagos circa 1972. The first two percussion-heavy segments of the “Underworld” section are too brief to rise above the realm of song sketches. But the colossal 14-minute closer “Underworld 6” functions as the equally epic bookend to the opening “Earth 1”—only this time, UMO trigger a similar collision of hyperactive rhythms and tranquil textures to more ominous effect, sounding like a cassette dub of Pink Floyd’s “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” given a drum’n’bass remix.
To date, there’s been little evidence of UMO’s IC adventures rubbing off on the band’s official discography—since the launch of the series, UMO’s studio albums have mostly stayed within the comfortable confines of the pop song and rarely raised the temperature above chill. But at the very least, the IC series feels like an increasingly necessary release valve for the group. By amplifying their polyrhythmic potential and capacity for chaos, Bogotá ensures UMO keep one foot planted firmly in the unknown.
