Album Review: Songs You Make at Night by Tunng

U.K.-based collective Tunng formed in 2003 when core members Mike Lindsay and Sam Genders began weaving samples of film dialogue and other found sounds into their songs. They honed their approach over the course of several beautiful albums, always moving between staid traditional British folk trappings and more curious experimental electronics. Though various lineups would make new Tunng material under the Lindsay's guidance, Genders bowed out after 2007's Good Arrows, more focused on family life than life on the road or in the studio.

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After 15 years, it’s probably fair to describe Tunng as veterans of the folktronica genre that they helped to pioneer. Although never household names, their influence can be seen in many of today’s bands, and founding member Mike Lindsay has already produced one of the year’s most intriguing records in his LUMP collaboration with Laura Marling. For Tunng’s sixth album, the band have gone back to their roots – literally, by reuniting with original member Sam Genders.

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Tunng founding members Sam Genders and Mike Lindsay have reconvened for the first time in eleven years and have fallen back into lockstep immediately. Within moments of the first track here, Genders is singing of rainbow skulls and shards of sky over a stream of delicately arranged inorganic instrumentation. Their electronic touch is lighter than before, caressing their expressionistic lyrics into clear mental images, Martin Smith's Fender Rhodes being the gossamer thread throughout the record.

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Perhaps the most holistic example of the folktronica genre, London-based collective Tunng have been releasing albums of delicate acoustic guitar and immaculate electronics since the early 2000s. Returning with Songs You Make At Night (notable for the return of original member and core songwriter Sam Genders after a one-album hiatus), the group confidently continue their record of soft-spoken folk excellence and studied programming.   Tunng are at once traditional and forward-thinking. Their songwriting and delicately finger-picked ….

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Subverting the expected folk tropes and blending them with finely produced electronics and intensely considered programming is how Tunng managed to carve their niche and broke onto a British music scene in 2005 that was obsessed with run-of-the-mill indie rock bands. Delicate, introspective and experimental, Tunng built a name upon their ability to intertwine vibrant tapestries of folk with warbling touches of electronica, with their debut record 'Mother's Daughters and Other Songs' widely seen as a cornerstone of the movement that came to be known as 'folktronica'. Following founding member Mike Lindsay's recent foray into experimental folk in a collaboration with Laura Marling (Lump), 'Songs You Make at Night' represents the band's first release in five years, and further to that, the first record with fellow co-founding member Sam Gender (previously seen operating under the 'Diagrams' moniker) in over a decade.

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