A duo comprising Markus Reuter on touch guitar and Pat Mastelotto of King Crimson fame on drums, Tuner have released a couple of studio albums to date (Totem in 2005 and Pole in 2007) with Muut recorded live in October 2007 in the unlikely setting of Estonia. Whilst for the most part this is an instrumental effort there are a variety of sampled vocals employed on some of the tracks which result in cluttered arrangements and there is no real flow to the performance. Unquestionably both Reuter and Mastelotto are accomplished and well respected musicians but it does not necessarily follow that they will be successful collaborators and much of this ends up coming across as being an ill-conceived concept for a film noir soundtrack devised by two random individuals with a couple of laptops. The lack of cohesion and disjointed nature of the CD is made more apparent by the use of the seemingly indiscriminate interjection of spoken word and sound effects and its difficult to envisage anyone having the tenacity to sit through the whole thing in one session let alone what it must have been like for the Estonian crowd.
The bottom line here is that Muut simply has all of the hallmarks of a side project where the members can simply embed themselves in self-indulgence and this is most definitely one release for completists only.
Track Listing
1 bells of tartu
2 tied into a phrase
3 slow cabaret
4 on bass
5 rocky looks like a flower
6 muut
7 viljandi presidential suite
8 IMUR
9 Ÿhes›rmelise leierkastimehe seiklused and the organ grinder's addiction
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