Man From Uranus: Alien Flowers

I could do with something fun right now. Couldn’t you?

This is the very thing, a slab of fruity foolishness from Phil MFU – the eponymous Man From Uranus – who is also part of the brilliant Vanishing Twin (and Broadcast, before that). Library sounds, you ask? Psychedelia? Moog noodling? Tick tick tick – plus a whole load of inspired mucking about. It reminds me of both the superb compilation A Psychedelic Guide to Monsterism Island and Fantasma-era Cornelius, which are pretty good reference points.

‘Energy Charger’ opens up with some 8bit-ish upbeat enthusiasm, before ‘Stationary Object’ takes us into more reflective, mind-altering territory. And that’s the two sides of this album, really. ‘Cucumber Sword’ – cough – is probably the best example of the first sort of track, with some very excitable shouting/rapping from Taishi Nagasaka (Fat White Family). Look, the video pretty much explains the whole song:

After that we’re back into glitch-y tones, slowly stumbling rhythms. ‘Death Dreams of Opulence’, you say? Yes, and Neone Meate Dreams of the Octafish! RAM tapes, home of MFU, has a thing about amphibians – as the Orlando/TOMAGA split cassette made clear – and here’s the Man with a chorus of ‘Alien Frogs’, who are not advertising crap beer:

The penultimate track, ‘Cosmik Telephone’, is interrupted by what I can only describe as a dissolve sequence soundtracked by the Clangers, before busting out some full-on skronk. If this is a telephone conversation it sounds like the colloquy of elephants – maybe a trunk call? ‘Dream Trains,’ which closes the album, starts with no wave guitar and clonking drums before moving on to the calmer sounds of goods trains clanking past while contemplative piano plays.

This is a thoughtful, fun, inventive, where’s-that-going?! album and I urge you to give it a listen.

Buy from RAM Tapes Bandcamp page whydon’tcha?

jkneale