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A Magazine for Sheffield

Intelligent Life Everything Is Always The Same

New duo Intelligent Life blend double bass with electronic sounds to create introspective music with a real-world edge.


Released: 1 January 2021
Everything Is Always The Same

New group Intelligent Life have made a debut to remember. A genre-defying album, Everything Is Always The Same is an experiment in ambience. It uses the melancholy of contrabass, layered with slow tempos and elongated electronic notes, to generate fluidity and create a tone simultaneously meditative and surprising. The incorporation of spoken word across the album directs the reflective feeling towards the external world, centralising real-world issues in music which feels otherworldly.

One half of Intelligent Life, Jeff Düngfelder (also known as Ümlaut), is renowned for his utilisation of absence – he employs silence to create space for exchange between sound and listener. This stillness punctuates the otherwise richly layered sonic journey mapped out by the contrabass. Mike Brown – the other half of the group – is accomplished on the double bass and in electronic sound, having explored genres from rock to jazz to classical and country. His breadth of experience allows Everything Is Always The Same to move beyond any distinct genre, using the avant-garde components he specialises in.

The record is ultimately unclassifiable, challenging conventional categorisations to create introspective music with a real-world edge. ‘Shelter in Place’ engages with the relationship between the individual and the political scene, and ‘Over Thirty Seconds’ expresses a curiosity to explore images and sounds. The album experiments with human emotions, calling for space to feel and to question, while reminding listeners of the value of remaining grounded in the external world.