Mind Over Mirrors Shares “Vermillion Pink” via Noisey, with Interview.

Photo by Saverio Truglia.

Mind Over Mirrors, led by Chicago based synthesist, harmoniumist, and composer Jaime Fennelly, will release their expansive new double album, Bellowing Sun, on April 6th. After premiering the first single “Matchstick Grip” with NPR Music and their second single “Zeitgebers,” with The Quietus, today the band shares “Vermillion Pink” via Noisey, which Will Schube describes as “a prodding, curious composition… a deliriously fun cacophony, coupled with elastic, crunchy synths, all awash in the hazy ambiance of his droning undercurrent.”

“Bellowing Sun manages to touch on fascinating iterations of drone music, presenting a wildly diverse landscape of tracks that are both individualistic and work in lock-step to present a cohesive whole. This, perhaps, is the crowning triumph of Bellowing Sun: Its ability to spring naturally from a source, presented as music that’s existed forever, previously untapped before Fennelly awoke it from a slumber. It feels both massive and intimate, a hulking presence yet easily digestible… Bellowing Sun is merely a part of a larger vision. But the music—this current iteration of Mind Over Mirrors’ constantly evolving vision—is so powerful, so alive, that it carries a meaning all its own.” – Noisey

“Vermillion Pink” offers a dark, devotional take on the rhythmic drone music perfected on Bellowing Sun. Synthesizers flicker and gleam across the aural plane as seething violin, courtesy of Jim Becker (Califone, Iron & Wine), creates a brooding undercurrent onto which percussionists Jon Mueller and Janet Bean (Freakwater) carve out a hypnotic groove. Head to Noisey to hear the track, along with an in-depth interview with Fennelly.

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Listen to “Vermillion Pink”

Fennelly says, “Compositional tools can exist in a myriad of forms, including the tone & timbre of a piece of music gear. In Bellowing Sun (as well as my previous album, Undying Color) I’ve been running my harmonium through a particular rhythmic filter (a 90’s Lovetone Ring Stinger – which also happens to have a strikingly pink paint job), which creates unique animations of sound for an instrument that otherwise is very much known to fulfill static and supportive droning duties. My own approach to my work, and particularly within instrumental pieces, is to imagine sound as theater, where instruments (and their players) can assume dramatic transformative roles. A narrative score of ‘Vermillion Pink’ may read as, ‘the synesthetic color-sound of a lost vessel at sea or even outer-space, as solar winds and breakers advance and pound in the darkness. Humanity clings on in desperation and eventual resolution as the twinkling of the red-flare shrouded shores (referencing the preceding track of the album “Lantern on the Beach”) of distant planets slip farther away.’ Through such a description and electronic programming, the breathy harmonium, for example, undergoes a metamorphosis into a great storming surf.”

As Fennelly was writing the music that comprises Bellowing Sun, he was also designing and building a magnificent zoetrope, covered in abstracted images of the natural world, which appears on the cover of the album. This spinning light sculpture will be the centerpiece of the live production of Bellowing Sun, which will debut April 6^th at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, with an encore performance April 7^th. Both performances are on the verge of selling out. The zoetrope was created in collaboration with visual artists Timothy Breen, Eliot Irwin, and lighting designer Keith Parham. The production was commissioned by the MCA.

: Photo by Saverio Truglia.

: Photo by Saverio Truglia.

“In composing Bellowing Sun, Fennelly focused on rhythm more than ever. On “Matchstick Grip” that tactic pays continual dividends, injecting blood into his oxygen-rich music.” – NPR Music on “Matchstick Grip”

“An atmospheric groove that somehow sounds both intergalactic and medieval. Pulsating strings, shifting drum beats, and a harmonium play about the synth soundscape. The song beams and flickers, inspired by the growing impact of artificial light on living beings.” – Stereogum on “Zeitgebers”

Listen to “Zeitgebers”