By: Logan Brown
Los Angeles-based duo, Monde UFO, released their third album, Flamingo Tower, on March 7. Band members Ray Monde and Kris Chau started playing together in 2021 and have since released albums 7171 and Vandalized Statue to be Replaced with Shrine, as well as Spacemen 3 and Fugazi covers over the last few years. Flamingo Tower is perhaps their most cohesive work, a self-described “concept record” that weaves together 38 minutes of unsettling soundscapes, vintage samples and eerie vocals that perfectly capture an indescribable, yet haunting, feeling of being lost.
Flamingo Tower has been described online as a mix of neo-psychedelia, “hauntology,” jazz, avant garde and exotica, with even notes of samba and folk. But it isn't so easily defined. Monde UFO brought together a wide range of influences — from diverse music, to Paolo Sorrentino and David Lynch films, personal experience and childhood urban myths. Artistically, it draws on the improvisational nature of jazz. A recurring organ motif holds it all together, appearing throughout the album's 11 songs, especially highlighted on the opening and closing tracks, “Gambled House We're Wiping Fire (Psalm -1)” and “Psalm 3.”
“It's sort of a pseudo-collage of improvisation,” Ray says, “psych, sort of jazz, maybe folkish influence… the album gets a little eclectic.” But maybe it's best listened to without trying to categorize it at all. If you don't “understand” the album on first listen, that's part of the experience. Feeling lost and confused about life is a major inspiration for the album thematically.
Unlike Ray, Chau didn't have musical experience prior to Monde UFO. Primarily a visual artist, this gave her a unique perspective on creative expression and allowed her to give honest feedback on the songwriting process.
“As a visual artist I have skills and work that formed my identity. With music I have no real skills to offer, so it's really vulnerable to have to build something again,” Chau says. “My inspirations for Flamingo Tower are mostly being a good nutritious soil for Ray to get to make a big endeavor. So Flamingo Tower is one of the fruits from this Tree, I guess Ray is the Tree, and I would be the Earth.”
Ray describes the year-long creative process behind Flamingo Tower as “having a vision, but you have no idea what it is, you know. So you're cutting and pasting and jamming all these things together to see what works.” And Flamingo Tower works, capturing an abstract, almost unnamable feeling of uncertainty.
“Like a feeling over many years,” says Ray. “I'd say from maybe 19, 20 to 25 [years old] or something like that. Just being lost in the world.”
The album art also encapsulates this idea, depicting the metal frame of the real-life “Flamingo Tower,” an allegedly haunted place near the small town where Ray grew up in Connecticut. Legend has it that someone died at the infamous Flamingo Tower back in the ‘80s or ‘90s. As the story goes, after taking drugs, someone believed they were a bird and jumped off the tower trying to fly. Whether the myth is credible or not, people agree the place is still haunted. Without much to do growing up, bored teenagers like Ray would go there to pass the time. The haunting feeling lives on in this album.
“I wanted [Flamingo Tower] to feel like it's in the same time and space. Even though the songs are all over the place, I definitely had a vision of semi-trying to tie them into that span of a certain feeling of that years,” Ray says. Whereas previous albums 7171 and Vandalized Statue to be Replaced with Shrine were more so “collections of songs” focused on developing Monde UFO's sound, the band's latest release is a cohesive experience.
Maybe Chau describes it best. “Good art are answers to questions you didn't know you had,” she says. “Monde UFO sounds like everything and not like anything. We invite you to engage with it and not just consume it.”
Flamingo Tower is a highly recommended listen and a new experience no matter what kind of music you usually listen to. It's available now wherever you get music — on Bandcamp, streaming and vinyl LP.
