I’m guessing there’s not much to do in Vietnam during monsoon season, other than stay out of the rain. So when Unknown Mortal Orchestra found themselves holed up in Phu Sa Studios in Hanoi during the recording of their recent acclaimed opus, Sex & Food, they must have had plenty of time to jam with Ruban Nielsen’s dad Chris and local lad Minh Nguyen. The result is a 28-minute long instrumental album entitled IC-01 Hanoi, out this Friday on Jagjaguwar. Billed as ‘a sonic distillation of the band’s influences in Jazz, Krautrock and the avant-garde’, I had high hopes, particularly as Sex & Food was so good – a musical juggernaut, full of great songs, embracing a variety of styles, it showed a band seemingly at the height of their powers. So why does IC-01 Hanoi disappoint?
The first track ‘Hanoi 1’ gives a clue. It’s a one and a half minute long fuzzed-out and quite unremarkable guitar solo. It’s followed by ‘Hanoi 2’ a ponderous Krautrock-inspired fusion which serves as nothing much more than a backdrop for Ruben’s guitar antics and it’s a struggle to see what any of this has to do with Hanoi or anything else other than passing the time on a rainy afternoon in a foreign city. Krautrock, as a wise man nearly said, wasn’t just about playing the same note over and over again, it was about playing the right note over and over again. There’s none of the tension or jittery menace you’d find on, say, Can’s Future Days, or the far out, proggy otherness of Amon Düül.
‘Hanoi 3’ (and do you see where they’re going with the titles here?) starts to get a bit more Vietnam. It’s the first track to put Nguyen at the centre, piping away on what I believe is the sáo trúc, a traditional Vietnamese flute. I hate to say it, but it comes across as something mystical you’d find quite low on the bill at Womad. I really want to like it, and I really want to be generous, but it’s a bit dull. Later in the record he hits us up with the dàn môi, another traditional instrument similar to the mouth harp, and it produces some of the album’s more interesting textures. It feels like a lost opportunity that they couldn’t do more with him.
Things liven up a bit in ‘Hanoi 4’, which is propelled along by the kind of robotic, hypnotically intense rhythm guitar line that merits some attention. A looming, sub-aquatic noise that I can’t identify the source of phases in and out like a horny sea-creature looking for a mate. It’s simple and it works and it might be the only thing on the album really worth your time. ‘Hanoi 5’ onwards finally finds them attempting to get funky, and they produce a competently executed take on early seventies Miles Davis, showcasing Chris Rubens’ excellent horn playing. It’s the bit I’ve been waiting for and it’s where, quite annoyingly, they really start to lose me.
You see, here’s what the press release promised:
‘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.’
There’s a lot of problems with this. Firstly, I love On The Corner. It’s Miles Davis noticing the hitherto unexplored affinity that existed between Sly and the Family Stone and Karlheinz Stockhausen. It’s one of the most forward-thinking pieces of music ever committed to vinyl, and one of Davis’ most emphatic expressions of his blackness and his vision of the legitimacy of African-American art, culture and music. Ignored by the public and critics on release, the world has still not caught up. Funky Stockhausen, right? It’s knock-out, straight up genius. I never give out tens, but it’s my dream as a critic to be the only one handing tens out to something like On The Corner on day of release.
Secondly, Miles Davis would have hated IC-01 Hanoi. He despised anyone who wanted to put jazz in a museum, and that’s what this album does. It’s not even funky in my book. It’s jazz-rock fusion, so if anything it’s a nod towards Bitches Brew. The final suite of tracks sounds like Miles Davis. And that’s all they do, is sound a bit like Miles Davis. There is literally nothing experimental on this record. I’m sorry to be so harsh, but if their PR is going to ask me to judge it by the standard of On The Corner, I am going to hold it to that standard. And let’s be clear. No one has any business comparing IC-01 Hanoi to On The Corner. They’re both records, but that’s it. It would be as ridiculous as claiming that Definitely Maybe exists in some kind relationship with The White Album. It would like to think it does, but it doesn’t, because influence is not only emulation.
The opener on Sex & Food is called ‘A God Called Hubris’ and I had thought of concluding by describing IC-01 Hanoi as an offering to that god, but actually, a bit of hubris wouldn’t have gone amiss here. Because that’s finally the problem with it. It just doesn’t go far enough.
Ic-01 Hanoi is released on 26th October through Jagjaguar.
