While the 78-rpm vinly record remains a relatively stable format in terms of preservation, the availability of playback devices and technical knowledge of the format has banished it from the public consciousness, and 78s remain pertinent largely only in the minds of collectors and archivists. Ian Nagoski, a formidable musician in his own right, is one of the former, and his love for 78s has spawned Black Mirror, a colleciton of ethnic music on 78, now preserved digitally, in line with the label's purpose, to provide aural access to a new audience decades after the records' original release, and, in the case of most, for the first time in the United States.
The product of years of work, Black Mirror features twenty-four tracks from all over the globe, newly mastered. Spanning almost four decades (from 1918-1955), much of the music retains a timeless quality, likely due to the fact that, despite when it was recorded, much of the music played here is often based in folk traditions, meaning that any well-versed ethnic music listener will likely hear ingredients that have been used for decades, even centuries, and are utilized by performers to this day. Flamenco, Balinese gamelan, and Scottish bagpiping appear alongside lesser known musics like the Chinese Rulin musical drama, and the South Indian periya melam. When possible, Nagoski provides a context for the music, and it's not rare for the story behind the recording to be as captivating as the music itself: Nagoski's story of Gong Belalowana Bali's debut gamelan recordings is perhaps the most arresting, though there remain other details of note, such as Petar Perunovic-Perun's friendship with Tesla and his transformation from the world's formost Gulse musician to Serbian propogandist in the US during the first World War. Nagoski's attempts to document the musicians and/or the recordings adds a level of fascination to Black Mirror, but there's no upstaging the music that makes up the compilation.
While newly mastered, the tracks on Black Mirror won't be mistaken for modern, cutting-edge recordings, but that's in no way a shortcoming on most tracks. There might be some sort of cultural Pavlovian reaction for the modern listener's ears to find some manner of cultural nostalgia in these old recordings, but the album doesn't succeed solely on such superficial merits. Black Mirror contains excellent music; one could assume that in the days when recordings were rarer and every musician didn't have a home studio or laptop on which to record their work, many of the musicians who had the chance to record were some of the best of their ilk. Listening to Lata Mangeshkar's haunting "Aayega Aanewaala," the first hit for the vocalist, who would come to be a highly acclaimed performer on Indian soundtracks, exhibits one side of Black Mirror, which features tracks from musicians who, stars in their homeland, remain unknown to American ears. But for every Mangeshkar and Pipe Major Forsyth, so esteemed in his abilities that he once served as personal piper to the King George V, there are more obscure performers, like Nji R. Hadji Djoeaehn, largely unknown save for his name, or, in the most extreme case, the unknown Burmese musicians whose playing closes the disc.
The diversity of the collection can be a little disorienting as it spans continents and decades from one track to the next, but Black Mirror, despite any motion sickness, presents a rich stream of great performances, preserved and repackaged astutely in yet another inspiring Dust to Digital release.
