Customer Reviews

Finally We Are No One

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I really liked this CD when I first bought it. It worked as good "chill" music, which I needed around that time. A month later, I stopped listening to it. The "natural selection" of my CD case ended up weeding it out; I just sold it used this week.

I guess what I'm trying to say is this isn't the holy grail of music or anything and is frankly a bit overhyped judging from the other reviews I've read. In tearms of Icelandic music, Sigur Ros and Bjork are both MUCH better and do pretty much the same sort of thing. Get one of their CD's instead of this one.

Reccomended only for those who either need to have "this weird Iclandic techno CD with an accordian on it" so they can impress their friends with how "indie" they are or want music that they can just tune out and do odd jobs around the house to.

ok, so this cd is pretty good. but it doesn't hold a candle to anything by Boards of Canada. i actually found it quite boring. there are a couple good tracks. but this cd is not in my rotation. Music has the right to children is.

"Inexplicably beautiful" is the best I can do to describe the amazing sophomore release from Iceland's Mum. Scattered with simplistic melodies and enchanting vocals, Finally We Are No One grasps the listener from the first track and spins them through a completely different musical universe. Unlike anything I've ever heard, Mum perfectly blends synthesizers and pianos. It's amazing to see the amount of growth from their debut album (Yesterday Was Dramatic, Today Is OK). Highly recommended for anyone interested in beautiful, entrancing Icelandic music.

While expanding my IDM/electronic collection, I always overlooked Mum because I was never really big on Sigur Ros and the samples here on amazon didn't really do anything for me. When I had every Aphex, BoC, Four Tet, Autechre, Prefuse, Squarepusher (etc...) album, I hesitantly decided to pick up a copy of 'Finally We Are No One'.

When I got home and listened to it, I was blown away. There are few albums ("Music Has the Right..." for instance) that leave me speechless after just the first time hearing it and make me excited to uncover new aspects with each further listen. To start, the samples on this page do no justice to any song on the album. This CD is meant to put on with headphones to get the full effect and just relax and feel the music. The best way that I can explain the music on this album is what you'd get if Four Tet joined forces with Boards of Canada. It has both the dreamy, psychedelic feel of BoC, and the more down-to-earth traditional musical sounds of Four Tet. To me this is great, because with Four Tet's music I always liked the way it was going but it never quite got the job done for me.

Each song is unique and beautiful in it's own way. My favorite would have to be "Green Grass of Tunnel". This song has so many different aspects of beauty, not to mention if you close your eyes you can perfectly visualize every word. The music on this album is just unbeleivable... and combined with the soft, trippy lyrics make for an incredible listening experience.

I recommend this album to anyone who loves Boards of Canada, and especially to Four Tet fans.

I heard a few clips of this band, prior to receiving the CD in the mail. Immediately I got some headphones and went out in my backyard, sat near my garden, fountain and birdbath, and began listening to the CD start to finish.

I have a large collection of albums, many of which I love, but none have ever hit me so hard on first aproach. I have heard others say that this CD took some time for them to love, but I found it to be brilliant, beautiful, and inspirational right away.

The sounds used to create these songs are everything from vocals to an old tin can scraping back and forth on a wood floor. That's partly what makes the album so intruiging. There are a million sounds coming together to create beautiful music. It's extremely innovative, and extremely real. Who is to say that the sound of a television set to a scrambled station, receiving immense interference and crackling, is not a magnificant sound. I, for one, would have argued it was an unpleasant sound, prior to hearing this album.

Amidst these sounds, we are engulfed in beautiful melodies, which Mum somehow constructs from their strange instumentation choices.

Aside from the sheer beauty of the tracks, we also find vivid imagery within their contents. For example, track 5. "Behind two hills,,,,a swimmingpool" gives an incredibly vivid visual of a crystal clear swimmingpool with gentle ripples forming on the surface. This is only one example, but so many of the songs gave me vivid images. Many of which reminded me of my childhood, and put my imagination to work. And to me, childhood is the most magical time of life, and to be able to create vivid images of those special moments is an extremely difficult task, but I doubt it could be done any better than Mum has done with "Finally We Are No One."

I cannot pick a favorite track, as they all seem to go together to form one collective work, and each is beautiful. Although "Green Grass Of Tunnel" gave me goosbumps and brought me to laughter when I first heard it. And I found my self suppressing tears during "Finally We Are No One."

This is like nothing you have ever heard before... which is why I highly reccommend you check it out. It is, without a doubt, one of the greatest albums I have ever heard.

MUM... MHHHUUUHHHMMM! Tastes like very good, very soft and very fresh iceland music.
They are great!

Another great band from the land of fire and ice!It may be the meloncholilike singing of the twins or it may be the way small everday noises, which usually go unoticed,add up to create gorgous noise when put together.NOt quite electronica nor folk, mum fall into there own catagory.It took me just two listens to develope a ear for this kind of music.For others who expect aphex twinish electronica you wont find it.But give it a shot it will open some doors for calm dreamlike electronic music with a more accustic approach

This is a breathtaking CD, full of achingly beautiful fragments of melody, which never linger long enough, leaving you no option but to play the whole thing again. There are 11 tracks (I hesitate to call them 'songs' as their structure is so unusual), a couple are delicious morsels, and the others are meals in themselves. Tracks 1 - 10 are stunning, but what follows is worth another 5 stars on its own: 11 minutes of indescribable bliss. "Land Between The Solar Systems" lures you in gently, wraps you in its nectar vocals, then - once it has you in its power - it pounds you through a storm, before delivering you back on a bed of soft, warm instrumentation. Best listened to lying down, with your finger poised to press "play" again as soon as it ends! (Also available as 2 mini-LPs, but the effort in changing sides/discs would spoil the experience; or in an Icelandic-language edition, but again this is unnecessary as Múm's vocals are sound rather than meaning).

Fey another other reviewer said. Worst album ever yet another other reviewer said. Seems to be an album that creates opinions.

Well I liked it - quirky and varied enough to hold interest from go to whoa. Loses 1/2 a star 'cos I listened to it on the same night as Oval's "Diskont 94", which I frankly found more intelligent, and because I think Baxter beats Mum for Scandanavian coolness. How uncool am I?

UPDATE: I have realised this is an absolutely stunning little cd on repeated plays of late. It strikes a deep and harmonious chord in my heart. The comment of another reviewer about the album bringing memories of childhood is right on the spot. There is an innocence and freshness that leaves me feeling uplifted whenever I play it. Perhaps that's why not everyone likes it - such is the beauty of mix of musical tastes and opinions.

droll ~ music for a dark, remote mountain cave ~ very intimate ~ consistently lullabyish vocals ~ slightly experimental composition ~ mostly sparse ~ with a few dabbles of introverted, nervous percussive sections (reminiscent of björk b-side inventions) ~ moody ~ sweet ~ hushed ~ phlegmatic ~ ultra-mellow ~ track three's the best one ~ many are wasted space (kinda like sigur ros) ~ not as articulately arranged nor fully composed as one might expect ~ GOOD minimalism still bears an ornate construction, you know ... ~ but disappointingly so many of the big names on the edge anymore do not display this / missed this point ~ mum here does pass, though ~ at least it's still not the radio ... !