As the second decade of the 21st century winds to a close and for a handful of perfectly sound reasons, Exotica music isn’t exactly a thriving contemporary concern. However, the form has persevered as a point of historical interest, with a select few even able to conjure up fresh material that’s inextricably inspired by the style’s moods and climes. Right now, it’s doubtful anybody’s doing it better than sharp-dressing Swede Mattias Uneback; he’s had substantial time to hone his skills as part of The Test Pilots and more germane to the genre in Ìxtahuele, but with Voyage Beneath the Sea, he’s debuting as a leader, and per the title, the LP is an underwater delight. It’s out now on Subliminal Sounds.
When I say that Exotica has persevered historically into the present, I’m thinking specifically of the Numero Group label’s Technicolor Paradise: Rhum Rhapsodies & Other Exotic Delights, a multi-disc various artist retrospective deep dive into the style from last year, and additionally Subliminal Sounds’ own Pacific Paradise, which threw a spotlight onto the work of a single artist, the obscure bandleader Paul Page.
The emphasis on blissful states of being and temperate locales elevates those releases to a standard far above that of the associated genre of Cocktail Lounge. Thankfully, this extends to the Exotica impulse as manifested in the recent past by Ìxtahuele (the band’s last album Call of the Islands came out in 2016) and in the here and now by Uneback.
While surely conscious of the imagery and atmosphere that surrounds Exotica, with Voyage Beneath the Sea’s sleeve design radiating like an album rescued from a box moldering in a corner of a dimly lit antique shop (a look it shares with Page’s collection), Uneback is considerably more than some dude sporting a thrift store ascot and guzzling from a pitcher of poorly mixed martinis.
The difference may not seem that substantial, but it is indeed wide. On one side, where we find Uneback, is exalted kitsch, and on the other is second-rate hackery promoted as some kind of virtue. The easiest point of comparison for Voyage Beneath the Sea is to Martin Denny, and one of that pianist-composer’s consistent attributes is that his material was sharply executed by highly skilled musicians.
Uneback tackles this aspect of Denny’s Tiki-cultural shebang with total gusto as his assembled players for this recording are frequently classically trained, including his sister, violinist Sara Uneback (though here she plays viola) alongside flautist Amalia Beauregard Camp, oboist Siobhan Parker, percussionist Wictor Lind (who makes a large immediate impression in opener “Triton, God of the Sea”), trumpeter-trombonist Jonathan Kronevik, and upright bassist Anders Ljungberg.
But the most prevalent and distinctive ingredients on the album are the piano and the variety of mallet instruments including vibraphone, xylophone, and marimba, all played by Uneback; the later enhances the similarity to Arthur Lyman, who along with an extensive solo discography was a member of Denny’s band during his popular heyday.
Birdcalls were a common facet in Denny’s work during this era, adding to the touristy tropical island allure (and intensifying the music’s datedness), but Uneback’s record, in keeping with its underwater theme, instead features ample burbling, dripping and cascading. Interestingly, per Subliminal Sounds’ notes, the album concept has long been a passion project of label CEO Stefan Kéry, who first proposed it to Ìxtahuele, and understandably so, as the name of the group’s 2016 album should infer.
Ìxtahuele was unable to deliver on Kéry’s idea, though the band’s original pianist Carl Turesson Bernehed contributes to the choir heard in the title track here (notably, Siobhan Parker also played on Call of the Islands). That this vocal aspect so ably magnifies the time-capsule feel of the record while simultaneously deepening its contempo musical value is no small feat.
Listening casually to Voyage Beneath the Sea will likely instill the idea that it’s not only just Denny-esque, it’s an outright replica. This seems part of the intent. However, closer listening reveals the sly ambitiousness of the project; I especially enjoy how the percussion begins to mimic the sounds of water in “Silent World,” and also the Joe Meek touches in “Starfish.”
But the boldest move toward non-imitative relevancy is the nearly 14-minute “Sargasso,” but only partly through scale, as it offers much of the set’s strongest playing, including an exquisite recurring mallet pattern by Uneback and extensive fluting from Camp that’s wonderfully non-trite. That may seem odd given Voyage Beneath the Sea’s immersion in such a low-brow genre, but the subtle resemblance of finale “Coronado Dream” to Trinidadian steel bands reinforces the magnitude of Uneback’s achievement. It’s an unlikely success, but all the better for it.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
