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Unknown Mortal Orchestra is the project Ruban Nielson started in 2009, a New Zealand-born multi-instrumentalist who turned an anonymous bedroom experiment into one of psych's sharpest pop minds. Out of Portland, with brother Kody on drums and Jacob Portrait on bass, UMO drifted from woozy, tape-saturated lo-fi into bright, synth-forward funk and soul. Multi-Love is where that turn happened: a self-produced 2015 record built on vintage synths, disco grooves, and R&B, written in the wreckage of a polyamorous relationship at home.
We go back a ways with this band. UMO played Austin Psych Fest in 2014 (back when that is what we were called), then came through Levitation again in 2023 and 2025. Pressing the 10th anniversary of Multi-Love as a Levitation Edition feels less like a release and more like keeping faith with a record that has lived in our rotation the whole time.
Ten years on, Multi-Love still sounds like the moment Nielson stopped hiding. The lo-fi murk burns off and what is left is wide open: Can't Keep Checking My Phone struts on a disco pulse, the title track stacks falsetto into a synth heat-haze, and the whole thing runs warm where the early records ran fogged. It is a heartbreak album that decided to dance, and the tension between the grief in the lyrics and the glow in the grooves is exactly what keeps pulling us back.
Critics clocked it too. Pitchfork called it his most accomplished work to date, and Consequence named it his most fully realized album yet. We do not lean on the scores, but they land where we do. Our one honest gripe: a couple of the back-half cuts coast on vibe more than melody, and the record can feel slightly front-loaded.
None of that dents why it earns wax. Multi-Love is the pivot point of UMO's whole catalog, the record where the band found its color, and that deserves to spin. Our Acid Rain Splatter LP, limited to 300, is how we are marking it.
Recommended if you like: Angel Olsen, Besnard Lakes, Black Mountain.
