Mirror - Solaris
(Idea)
According to the Idea web site, Solaris is already sold out... This makes for interesting review writing, as the necessary evil of reviews purely as press and promotion, an idea that I've never really ascribed to, can be at least temporarily forgotten, because it seems that Idea surely doesn't need press to sell this one.
Christoph Heemann and Andrew Chalk, the duo who make up Mirror, are purveyors of an understated minimalism, one that relies less on pure drones and more on sparse, atmospheric noises. With unidentified instrumentation, Mirror pour out forty-one minutes of dark music, the soundtrack to those nether regions of the deep sea where the fish need their own light sources and the sediment makes navigation nearly impossible. Swooshes of white noise are peppered with muted clangs and scrapes of what could be a piano or manipulated guitar while electronic glitches dance with high-pitched shrieks of sound. Dense drones come and go in relatively short durations, while scattered noises of acoustic and electronic origins play in the mix and a saxophone is quietly stretched to the limits of its palette of sounds. Heemann and Chalk's soundscape brings forth auditory hallucinations of numerous unheard sounds: the underwater songs of whales, radio static, labored breathing, rattlesnakes, the quiet hiss of air escaping a tiny opening at the top of a coffee pot.
Solaris is a rich tapestry, to be sure. The well-executed mix of heavier drones with lighter accoutrements of noise is never stagnant, due largely to the diverse sounds that Mirror employ. Mirror are never overly demonstrative, and the result is a calm, delicate music that's eerily soothing. Standing on the ocean floor, straining eyes to catch the glimpses of light that flicker almost imperceptibly in the water above, one might hear the sounds of Solaris enveloping them, coaxing them into a sleep that they may not awake from.
[To buy Mirror's Solaris, go to www.IdeaRecords.com and proceed to the links page to find a list of vendors worldwide who may still have the disc in stock.]
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