Mum The Peel Sessions

So apparently Iceland have something approaching a monopoly on today's most ethereal and beautiful experimental music. Maybe that's an overstatement, but the Land of Fire and Ice certainly has it's share of the more respected artists working in this field, and Múm slot nicely in between Sigur Ros and GusGus' more atmospheric leanings.

A Peel Session release is the Ronseal of albums: it does what it says on the tin. You know that with a Peel session you will be getting not only a band or artist selected by the man with perhaps the best taste there's ever been; you're also getting extremely good live versions of tracks selected by the bands themselves. So despite the fact that Múm's album is only four tracks long, if you're baulking at £8.99 you might want to take quality into consideration. Compared to most live recordings, for instance, there's a near studio-level clarity and fidelity, which says much about not only the recording environment but the ability of the band: in 2002, when the session was recorded circa the release of Finally We Are No-One, the band was still just the original trio - all the more impressive when you consider the kaleidoscope of sound on offer here.

It's kind of hard to pin down that sound, especially if this release were to be your introduction to Múm: while in parts (say, on Now There Is That Fear Again, originally from the aforementioned Finally We Are No-One) they mine similar sort of territory to their former label-mates, and Iceland's biggest musical export of the last couple of years, Sigur Ros, replete with atmospheric gurgling and menacing, almost accordion-like synths (if you can imagine a menacing accordion) and the childlike, almost unsettling vocals of twin sisters Gyða and Kristín Anna Valtýsdóttir. The big, oppressive chords are there along with the tremendous shifts in key and dynamic - perhaps not quite as big as Sigur Ros on their last album, for example, but many would argue (myself included) that Ros went too far down that root anyway on Takk and lost some of the simplistic elegance that's presented instead here by Múm.

Where Múm set themselves apart from most is the subtlety and sophistication with which they employ their electronic components: glitchy and beaty at times, certainly, but no one factor seems to be the be all and end all of the band's music, which makes them a refreshingly diverse and attractive proposition. So: subtlety and elegance, yet innovation and intriguing instrumentation - Múm only get marked down for being a fairly inessential purchase. For what's little more than a single, there are four album tracks here which, if you have Finally We Are No-One and Yesterday Was Dramatic - Today Is OK, you'll already own. It's a completists-only release, but well worth the time of day anyway.