Unknown Mortal Orchestra (album)
| Unknown Mortal Orchestra | ||||
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| Studio album by Unknown Mortal Orchestra | ||||
| Released | June 21, 2011 | |||
| Recorded | 2010 | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 30:09 | |||
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| Unknown Mortal Orchestra chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Unknown Mortal Orchestra | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Aggregate scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Metacritic | 73/100 |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   |
| The A.V. Club | C+ |
| BBC Music | (favorable) |
| Consequence of Sound | C+ |
| Drowned in Sound | 7/10 |
| musicOMH |  |
| NME | 8/10 |
| Pitchfork | 8.1/10 |
| PopMatters |   |
| Prefix Magazine | 8.5/10 |
Unknown Mortal Orchestra is the self-titled debut album by American and New Zealand rock band Unknown Mortal Orchestra, released on June 21, 2011 on Fat Possum Records.
The album won the 2012 Taite Music Prize.
Ruban Nielson left The Mint Chicks in the beginning of 2010, citing a loss of interest in the group's music. Following an incident during one of the band's live performances and Nielson's subsequent departure, The Mint Chicks broke up. Nielson had already returned to Portland, Oregon, where he began working at a film production company as an illustrator. He quickly found himself wanting to write and record music again and began searching for "psychedelic records with lost tunes" for inspiration. Nielson had become very specific about what type of record he wanted to find for inspiration and, with that specificity, began making that record himself instead. Once he had finished writing and recording the album's first song, Nielson uploaded it anonymously on May 17, 2010 onto Bandcamp under the name "Ffunny Ffrends". Within a day, the song had received significant coverage from independent music blogs such as Pitchfork.
Nielson maintained the band's anonymity as he was not sure what he wanted the band to be and did not want to "face up to Mint Chicks fans and to people who were looking forward to a new Mint Chicks record." Nielson eventually claimed the track under the band name Unknown Mortal Orchestra.
On the subject of the album's recording subsequent to the coverage of and reception towards "Ffunny Ffrends", Nielson said:
The album artwork is a photograph of the Monument to the uprising of the people of Kordun and Banija, a Yugoslav World War II memorial monument built on Petrovac, the highest peak of Petrova Gora (English: Peter's Mountain), a mountain range in central Croatia. Designed by Vojin Bakić and built in 1981, the monument is one of many monuments commissioned by Josip Broz Tito, leader of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, and is dedicated to the partisans of Kordun and Banija who were killed during World War II.
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