We caught up with bassist Jake Portrait to get the low down on the group’s fourth record Sex & Food ahead of their upcoming Australian tour.

It’s hard to pin down Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s sound at the best of times. Traces of funk, psychedelia, hip-hop and electro-pop and everything in between can be heard on nearly all of their records and 2018’s Sex & Food is no different, with the three-piece keeping us guessing track by track with the only consistent feature being the unrelenting warmth and grooves that UMO fans will be well familiar with.

“When we first got together one of the ideas was for the record disjointed at times and experiment. There’s songs like ‘American Guilt,’ then there’s stuff like ‘Hunnybee’ and then there’s really slow creepy stuff… I think that a lot of the stuff we’ve been listening to has been feeding the idea that you can make whatever song you want and not really be too worried about what other people are expecting from you,” Jake says.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-JlcmCxIXU

This free and experimental approach may have been influenced by the fact the album was recorded over four different continents – they cut parts of the record in Iceland, New Zealand and Vietnam – with singer Ruban Nielson leaving his Portland basement, where they have done the bulk of their recording in over the last few years.

“That was just an idea to get Ruban out of the basement. We had been to some of these places before through six years of touring, but we wanted to visit them for more than 24 hours at a time and Rueben also wanted to try out Vietnam,” Jake says.

Whilst UMO’s 2015 record Multi-Love was written about Nielson’s polyamorous relationship, Sex & Food seems to have taken on some heavier issues, though it’s not a political record. Rather, the album is an observational response to the state of the world right now. “Everything felt a bit darker since some of the changes that have happened around the world recently, and making darker music felt like the right thing to do,” Jake says.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ad2Iy0DMCWU

It’s not all doom and gloom for fans though, as the group will be bringing Sex & Food down-under in September (tickets here) and are looking forward to all the right things. “Hopefully we get to catch up with some friends there. Eat some pies, drink some beers,” Jake laughs. Sounds like a plan.