múm - Finally We Are No One (2002)

I'm pleased to present out first entry in the journey of me. What a fine selection fate had in mind for me to write about. The song that came up was Sleep/Swim by múm. A somber little instrumental piece only about 50 secs long, but serves as an appropriate prelude to one of the most beautiful albums I have ever heard. Sprinkled with little bells and glitches in the electronics this track really lives up to its name. It sets the stage for an album that you can get lost in. Let me put it this way, you know those dreams that keep shifting from something nice to something even better that you never want to wake up from, this could be the soundtrack. I'm not talking about those wild nasty fantasy dreams, I'm taking about those child like dreams where you feel truly loved and everything is innocent and perfect. That's how this album makes me feel. Sleep/Swim bleeds right into Green Grass of Tunnel. A song so lovely and haunting that It has brought me to tears. One of only 3 or 4 songs to ever do that.

This song was high in the running for my favorite song of 2004. My best friend Sean told me about this group mum I would probably like. I'm a very big Bjork fan and have been since that first X-Files movie came out and had "Hunter" on it. He tells me that mum sounds a lot like Bjork but better. "Thems some big words" I said. I'm still not convinced that mum is better than Bjork, different but equal in magnitude I'd say. I think he told me that because knew it would get under my skin and it did. Regardless, he was certainly onto something with mum. So I checked it out. I can remember sitting in my digital design class not paying any attention and surfing the web on my laptop in search of this mum album. At the time I was stoked that I could get on the internet from the class room. They had barely finished setting up Wi-Fi in every building at school. So I was searching google for mum and came across this image of a some group also called mum that featured some real fat guy holding these two dudes up against his bitch tits. I heard the girl sitting behind me who had seen this image scoff probably thinking i was some kinda of a perv. So that was funny. But i was able to find the real thing eventually and I loved it.

At the time I had just started dating this girl Renee. She was still in high school and I in my second year of college. So there was this noticeable difference in maturity to me. Especially when it came to musical tastes. Everything was going great at the time. I had fallen off the dating horse real hard after high school and Renee was the first girl i had dated in two years. I was very pleased to be in a relationship again. Anyway Renee had what I considered to be horrible taste in music. She loved shit like Slipknot and Disturbed and Korn. Gag me! I mean I kinda like those bands too but would never listen to them on a regular basis. Kinda like a joke is only funny once. I met her at a movie theater she was working at that I had also worked at. My old boss ' a friend' told me to come meet this girl Renee that I would probably dig. So i did and we had a few dates and blah blah blah...I eventually made her a mixed CD. One of the tracks on it was Green Grass of Tunnel. (I think I've put that song on every first mix I've made for anybody). My mix blew her mind. She had never heard anything like the music I listen to. I try to always make mixes of songs I love that the other person probably hasn't heard. She really became addicted and her musical tastes eventually reflected mine. I found that i was making her mixed CDs weekly and It had become one of the best ways I found to communicate my feelings to her. I can remember being in her room late one night when we were watching this movie "Wicker Park" and we were both very pleased that mum had made it on the soundtrack. Big achievement for such an obscure little Icelandic band. In fact the sound track could have been a mix I had made. It included all the bands we were both listening to at the time. That's another blog. I can't remember the movie at all.

Other Notable Tracks:
We Have a Map of the Piano
K/Half Noise
I Can't Feel My Hand Any More, It's Alright, Sleep Still

Listen
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=MAK63874