Mirrorring - Foreign Body Review

Anyone familiar with either Grouper or Tiny Vipers’ Jesy Fortino should be able to build up a reasonably accurate mental picture of what a collaboration between the two would sound like. Hazy, droning backdrops? Check. Muffled acoustic guitars? Check. Delicate vocals submerged in the background? Check. Still, they’re so well suited that the pair’s beautiful and sad debut album as Mirroring proves far more than the sum of its parts. At its best when they pool their strengths – highlight ‘Mine’, on which Grouper sinks Fortino’s voice in a whole swimming pool’s worth of watery reverb – ‘Foreign Body’ crawls under the skin and stubbornly lodges itself there....full text Ever tried playing Tiny Vipers and Grouper records simultaneously? Me neither – and with the release of Mirrorring you won’t have to. This is a lesson in collaboration – two unique styles entwined, the lines blurred – it’s one of the most beguiling, unique and quietly stunning records I’ve heard in a long time.

Fell Sound opens with drone, imagining desolate landscapes, the vocal’s transparent beauty, the occasional acoustic strums. This is where Jesy Fortino’s organic approach lays back into the textural layers of Grouper’s Liz Harris. And the record continually manages to find such sacred ground.

It feels like Fortino and Harris probably realised early on how well their individual pasts would merge for an alternative future, embracing the opportunity rather than guarding their own inventive brands. So even if Silent from Above is predominantly drawn from Fortino’s acoustic universe, it’s Mirrorring who take it from there – leaving trails of echoed voices and a constant hum of atmosphere.

Cliffs again doses the natural with ambience – ghostly angels breathe the words, while the guitar acts like a counting pendulum. Mine meanwhile aches – you can hear it in the close-to-broken vocal and the swelling waves of dream-constructed drone.

Drowning the Call is perhaps the most serene moment here – with the picked guitar and harmonic voices it feels like a folk-song’s final journey, simplicity cradled by the ethereal....full text When I heard that Jesy Fortino and Liz Harris were making a collaborative album (two PacNW residents who record solo as Tiny Vipers and Grouper respectively) my interest was piqued. Harris is well known for her elegiac, lo-fi, and often quite beautiful recordings, while Fortino is more of a traditional singer-songwriter. The results of the two’s time spent in collaboration satisfies my expectations completely and, really, provides us with a wonderful example of a case in which two distinct artists forge a new sound while remaining true to their individual aesthetics. Harris’ ghost chorals are fleshed out by Fortino’s more upfront songcraft and vice versa. A stellar album that reminds me of some nonexistent Flying Saucer Attack-offshoot that VHF might have released in the early 2000s....full text