Listening Mirror - What's Wrong With Miracles? (CD)

On this limited CD (edn of 100) Listening Mirror are stripped down from their usual duo format to just Jeff Stonehouse, who has put together these three lengthy pieces, for which he has included handy recording notes to help the listener get inside the processes involved in creating the sounds on the disc. Opener 'That boat has sailed' combines an intermittent drone created using the earth hum and harmonics from an Audition guitar, with chopped, stretched and looped bass notes developing sparse, lonely textures over the top. It's dark, submerged drone business, basically. Texturally a bit like Deathprod but with less of a melodic focus. Deep bleakness. This is followed by two tracks, 'It's In The Trees' and 'Storm Train', which were recorded “by attaching ribbons to an oscillating fan and allowing them to strike the strings randomly”. It's mostly lots of mid-bass hum, this one. Bit of an industrial feel to it, like it's the sound of a giant generator or something. The shimmering washes of guitar are quite hypnotic though but the mechanical nature of composition leaves it quite cold and soulless, just churning, monstrous mechanical breaths laying out an underlying feeling of doom and dread, with little else to grasp onto. I'm sure it doesn't help that the sun is shining and really I'd rather be listening to some horrible garage rock or overblown prog or bouncy jazz fusion or something more summery right now. If you want a CD of gloomy, understated dark ambience, though, that's exactly what this is.