The inimitable Richard D. James, normally infallible, had things surprisingly wrong with the track “Plenty Harmonium.” Not only are we, as a species capable of hearing, lacking an overabundance of harmonium, but there isn’t even enough to satiate the residents of a small town. Forget the overwhelming human benefit of a natural resource like water, or the tremendous increase in the quality of life that manufactured drugs like penicillin have brought; the world needs more harmonium! Those extremely depressing TV advertisements telling you to send a lonely buck to an impoverished child in Africa? Forget it! Dispatch that kid a harmonium, or a recording of a harmonium, and all will be well. If cultural tensions arise, said parcels can always be used as a bargaining chip with neighboring warlords.
Certainly doing his part to unleash a (benign) plague of harmonium on the world, Jaime Fennelly a.k.a. Mind Over Mirrors will be releasing a new LP, When the Rest Are Up at Four, on September 17 via Immune Recordings. As if it wasn’t made clear enough in the preceding paragraph, Fennelly’s instrument of choice takes the form of an Indian pedal harmonium, manipulated through the use of an array of oscillators, tape delays, phasers, and miscellaneous other synthesizing processors.
To what end, you might ask? A press release talks about an ebb and flow made apt by the instrument’s “popularity among islanders,” but on a more straightforward level, I’m hearing via SoundCloud an enveloping throwback to the 19th century, combined with an aesthetic not too far away from Daniel Lopatin’s output. Enlightening media incoming…
• Mind Over Mirrors: http://mindovermirrors.tumblr.com
• Immune: http://immunerecordings.net