monde ufo - flamingo tower - fire

Monde UFO follow the celebrated ‘7171’ album with a trip to the mysterious ‘Flamingo Tower’. In the shadows of the Los Angeles bustling music scene, the enigmatic collective led by visionary Ray Monde create a trance-like fusion of psychedelia and avant jazz, mantra-like evocations, brash moody ambience and passages reminiscent of long-lost library music.

Magnifiying Monde UFO’s idea of musical chaos, their early sonic escapades into off-kilter exotica is now elevated with sweeping atmospheric waves of sound inspired by an eclectic brew of Arto Lindsey, Khan Jamal’s ‘Drum Dance To The Motherland’, Keith Hudson, Milford Graves, Marion Brown, Don Cherry and Lennie Tristano.

Cast deep into number theory with occasional quasi-religious touchstones, ‘Flamingo Tower’ bustles with background sounds overlaid with intimate melodies conjuring plenty of suitably strange illusions; a synthetic orchestra plays baroque pop, a guitar is set to auto destruct and Ray Monde’s hushed vocals carry a bracing narrative. It’s an evocative album, one for the heavy music nerds, sprinkled with ear candy and proliferated by mysterious numbers which litter the song titles.

Ray Monde: "I don't really care for numerology but at the same time, I’m obsessed with it… ‘Samba 9’ is about me getting a pair of handed down Sambas (size 9) as a kid and feeling bad about a cowardly moment.”

Therein lies the tension; as a full meandering symphony from a dysfunctional strung-out quartet is broken up by a guitar break that recalls the magical fuzzed out psychedelics of Red Krayola at their free-form best. This is music that paints images with gentle strokes working their way under kaleidoscopic mystery, a prism of emotions overflowing. 

It’s suitably woozy and off-key, like life itself, with a stuttering rhythm and wayward sax for balance. By contrast, ‘Solitaire’ is a song that touches on the isolation and confusion found in moving forward in life, sounding like an out-take from a Mingus rehearsal with the Mad Professor locked in the control booth with original hippie boy Eden Ahbez for “vibes”.