It?s like this: apparently MUM aren?t exactly sure what direction they want to go. There are tracks on their second album ?The Szabotnik 15 Mission,? that would heat up any simmering club floor with their bone dry breakbeat funk. Other numbers ease smoothly and soulfully out of your headphones. And then there are the excursions into the jazzadelic zone, with boxy beats and fine electronics. But don?t misunderstand-the intentional indecisiveness of this pair out of Vienna, Stefan Jungmair and Paul Schneider, is solid gold. In this time of rigid club music and faceless lounge compilations with limited vision, the future belongs to the free spirits. Especially when the diversification isn?t cramped or forced, but rather comes from a relaxed and effortless hand, as is the case with MUM. And speaking of hands, the hands of these obsessed home studio craftsmen aren?t however, permantently fixed to their mouse buttons. In fact MUM first met through projects in the Vienna jazz and improv scenes, in which Stefan (saxophonist) and Paul (drums) drifted around. ?We had a common root,? laughed Paul, ?punk rock marked the start of our music careers.? To this day they thank the punk spirit for a healthy skepticism toward the cocky virtuoso types. ?A while back I even went to a few jazz gigs,? said Paul, ?but I got bored pretty quickly. All of the stuck up soloists, uninspired arrangements, the stiff rules?" Instead of fleeing into stifling basement clubs, Jungmair and Schneider dove into the Vienna electronic scene, which exploded in the late nineties, and since the release of their debut album with Klein Records, simply titled ?MUM? (2000), they have been making the machines hum. As the organic and the electronic constantly melt together like the blues and funk with the hard drive in the MUM universe, it?s no surprise that also vocals have recently taken a more important role. But the vocals of Betty Samper, who sings several tracks on ?The Szabotnik 15 Mission,? as well as the French singer Loiuse Vertigo (?L?Energie Irradiait?) are carefully molded through the sampler. ?It?s fun to cut and edit vocal recordings,? said Stefan, ?so that the meaning changes and expands.? Cutting and recomposing: the playful, sometimes tongue-in-cheek, almost dadaism of MUM is not only apparent in their use of vocals or live instruments. We are talking about a band here, whose name is an ode to mothers, and titled early tracks such things as ?Fischsemmel? (fish sandwich), or ?Maultrommel? (mouth harp). And now comes an album with the puzzling title ?The Szabotnik 15 Mission.? ?It was actually my girlfriend?s idea,? explained Stefan. ?It?s a quote by a TV commentator on a tennis match, in which a player desperately tried to win her first 15 points. ?So, it?s basically a metaphor for something that is almost impossible to achieve,? added Paul. ?But then it does work out somehow.? MUM achieves their own mission impossible to bring together fat beat-tracks, elegant funk and a pinch of bad a**, by keeping on the their unique smooth and well-cut path.