Artist Spotlight is our regular feature introducing you to Cities and Memory artists around the world with an in-depth interview. In this edition, we introduce you to Connecticut-based multidisciplinary artist Jeff Düngfelder, who works across film, sound, photography and graphic design, and who is one of the longest-standing Cities and Memory contributors, taking part in almost every project.

I am an interdisciplinary artist employing sound, film, photography and graphic design in my audio-visual projects.

For my music/sound projects I an known as Ümlaut. I have releases on Audiobulb, Handstitched*, Esc.rec, and Carpe Sonum labels. I have an upcoming release on the Driftworks label later on in the year. I have participated in most of the Cities and Memory projects over the years, as well. I find these projects exceptionally inspiring and satisfying.

The thematic concepts that distinguish my work are absence and silence; the ineffable exchange between the observer and the image; and random moments of stillness within a landscape in flux. With a minimalistic, electro-acoustic approach, I seamlessly commingle patchworks of field recordings and electronics within a universe of shadows and colours. Infinite interpretations allow the listener’s imagination to inhabit the apertures among grainy textural sounds, elements of ambient musique concrète and noise. Spaciousness is juxtaposed with intimacy and crafts a musical language of experimental ambience.

In addition to my solo recordings as Ümlaut, I am a member of a trio called Intelligent Life. In collaboration with Mike Brown on contrabass and Joshua Trinidad on trumpet, I mix my own electronica with their downtempo and jazz elements. We are currently finishing up a new album to be released later this year.

You can view/listen to all of the albums on my website. My film, photography and graphic design projects go hand in hand with my music. They intertwine and mutually influence each other.

You can the process watching my short films, in which I combine all of my interests and skills in one place. I am most at home is working with sound + vision and with time. A love of sound, photography and design combines all of my passions into one. You can view the works on Vimeo.

At the same time I am very involved in abstract art and graphic design. You can view the broad range of my daily visual experimentations on Instagram.

The interview continues below ⬇️, and this map collects together all of Jeff’s contributions to Cities and Memory: 

Birdsong onomatopoeia.

I have always loved all kinds of music. I did not grow up with music in my home, but loved searching and discovering new and different sounds.

Thinking back to my earlier years, before I owned any records, it was TV and film soundtracks that caught my attention, which explains the soundtrack quality of the music I make today.

In my teens I was really into alternative rock and singer-songwriters. Discovering electronic music changed all that. Particularly, German electronic sounds, like Kraftwerk, Cluster, Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schultz. This opened up a new universe and a lifelong love for exploring new sounds.

As I think of it now, I recall seeing Brian Eno named as producer on Devo’s debut album, “Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!” I immediately searched for more information on him. His ambient albums changed everything about how I looked at music.

Pursuing information on other artists Eno was associated with opened up an even wider world of new sounds. It still influences me to this day. David Bowie’s album “Low” also opened up a new door, too.

Throughout my multidisciplinary work the common thread is experimentation. With everything I try to start with a blank canvas. I experiment and see what happens, what develops.

I approach all my work these days with this attitude. More like, “let’s see what happens if I do this or that”. I find that very exciting. When starting a visual or musical project, I go in with an open mind, without preconceptions or structure. Sounds and images gestate right in front of me. I trust my intuition and follow where it takes me.

When I first started making music it was more about building blocks to create a whole. Whereas now it’s more of random experimentation based on chance. I’m an explorer looking for new finds. A theme of exploration is present in all my albums.

A release that I’m particularly proud of, which incorporates my interdisciplinary approach, is the album MUSIQUE DE FILM II on Audiobulb Records.

This album contains fifty-five one-minute films with a respective fifty-five individual soundtracks. I approached this project as a condensed spiritual exercise or meditation. Clearing the mind all distraction opened the floodgates of sounds, visuals and flashes of insight.

Placing time limitations (at one minute per piece) left no room for preconceived notions or second-guessing. My intent was to work fast. Each soundtrack and film was crafted within a 24-hour period. Instrumentals are seamlessly merged into an infinite realm of incidental electronics, mechanicals, voice, drones and intonations from the natural world.

The corresponding films liquidise and flow with the music, each one into the next, and draws the listener/viewer into a protective world of otherworldly calm.

I chose to make fifty-five pieces because the number fifty-five is the tenth number (signifying, “completeness”) in the Fibonacci sequence (F10). The mathematical pattern of the Fibonacci sequence is present Art and Nature.

One composition that comes to mind is La Mer Gelée (The Frozen Sea). I find that most of the field recordings that are available for reimagining at Cities and Memory are pretty amazing and inspiring. For La Mer Gelée I used a field recording from a frozen beach (Munkkiniemi Beach) in Helsinki, Finland.

I am drawn to sounds that hit home with me, ones that fill my head with ideas, and this one was special. The original field recording was made from ice crystals that literally touch the sea. I immediately thought of reimagining these frozen sounds into my own music.

Alongside the original field recording, I focused on complementing the frozen sound with glitching sounds, and fragments of electronic and minimal acoustic tones to create a new world. The resulting track is a microsound environment that is not mechanical, but organic, containing interferences and errors that reveal harmonic undertones from the natural world.

All of the Cities and Memory projects that I have worked on are special to me in their own way. It’s hard to put into words, but this one has a little something extra.

Some of my favorite artists include Brian Eno, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Carsten Nicolai, Geir Jenssen, Bill Nelson, Ryuichi Sakamoto, along with record labels, such as Audiobulb, 12K, City Centre Offices, EMIT, Expanding Records, LINE, Morr, Raster-Noton, Touch.

For new music, my best recommendations can be found at my Listening Pearls monthly radio show on CAMP Radio. The show broadcasts directly from the revolutionary arts facility high in the French Pyrenees and features two hours of new and upcoming ambient, electronic, experimental, modern classical and minimal music releases.

All of my favourite new music is there in one place. All of the Listening Pearls radio shows are also available on Mixcloud.

Since relocating from metropolitan New York to the northern Connecticut countryside, I would say the prevalence of birdsong has brought me the greatest amount of pleasure.

There are so many species of birds. Awakening to their singing in the morning and walking on the local trails provides endless hours of bliss.

There are doves, woodpeckers, goldfinches, jays, catbirds, bluebirds, warblers, vireos, orioles, starlings, mockingbirds, herons, eagles, egrets, hawks, crows… the list goes on.

All my music is computer based (Apple) in Logic Pro, using software and field recordings. Lately, my favourite software is Tapes.01 by The Phono Loop.

I love this software. It provides endless possibilities for creating new and unexpected sounds, which meshes perfectly with my experimental random/chance approach to recording.

As mentioned earlier, I am in the process of completing the next Intelligent Life album with my trio (where my electronica is combined with Mike Brown’s contrabass, and Joshua Trinidad’s trumpet).

We started the group in New York. Brown and Trinidad are now based in Colorado, so lots of back and forth file sharing is going on. Our recordings flow quite effortlessly. It is a real pleasure working with these two great musicians.

I have completed recording 146 tape loops, which form the foundation of my next Ümlaut album. Along with my daily visual experiments, I’m currently recording sound experiments with a couple of other artists.

I also have a remix for Audiobulb Records in progress as well as a recording for EX! – a magazine for experimental art in Germany. So lots of musical things are happening right now.