Ace Fu Records
2006
This Is Tunng: Mother's Daughter And Other Songs
About This Album
The debut album from London's Tunng, following several singles from which only two tracks are reprised here, presents ten alluring glimpses into the already fully formed and distinctive soundworld they would continue to explore and develop on future releases: in essence, gently pastoral acoustic folk, liberally garnished with electronic flourishes and warpages. It's a style that finds clear parallels in the work of New England's the Books -- in particular, the intermittent found-sound snippets and spoken word samples (that's Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso reading from their poetry in "Out the Window with the Window") make that connection unmistakable -- but has few other obvious comparisons. Which doesn't mean it's hard to classify: indeed, the genre tag "folktronica," which had entered into general usage several years before Tunng's emergence, never had a more apt referent. The electro-acoustic IDM of folktronic pioneer Four Tet, which is briefly recalled here by the glitchier, beat-driven portions of the instrumental "Kinky Vans," may have incorporated organic elements, but that hardly seems sufficient to qualify it as folk. Apart from outliers like Adem (a singer/songwriter whose electronic aspects are relatively superficial), few if any of the loosely defined style's practitioners have conducted their genre-blending escapades with so firm a foundation in conventional folk songcraft.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6 and 7)

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