Mitcham Tuell’s Mome Rath project (named for the tiny, two-legged puffballs from Alice In Wonderland) infuses dance music with a jittery, unsettling energy.
Mome Rath’s debut release, Kitchamajig, contains vaporous melodic swells, fast-twitch drum programming, brass accents, and a few garbled vocal samples. “Sunlit,” the album’s second track, is both its strangest and most subdued offering. A jelly-legged bass line kicks things off, wending its way through gathering layers of clicks and chimes before a murky piano figure joins in, circling restlessly in a loop that never seems to resolve itself. Then comes the sax, a lounge lizard set piece rendered psychedelic by an echo effect that reflects the instrument’s squawks back on itself in squelchy facsimile. The entire thing sounds like it’s one step off from where it should be, a fitting tribute to the funhouse world the Mome Raths themselves call home.
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