Mirror Mirror

Brooklyn-based Mirror Mirror has earned a reputation for its curious blend of music and performance, ... (more) as well as its polymorphous membership. Chief songwriters David Riley and Ryan Lucero met in 2003 and quickly recruited percussionist Matt Bagdanoff, guitarist Jill Kaufman, and a rotating cast of friends, performers and guest musicians. Their unpredictable live shows incorporate theater, visual art, video, design, and even food. MM has played sold-out shows at rock venues and clubs, as well as site-specific shows at galleries and art spaces, where they have been known to construct mazes, offer massages to strangers and lead their devoted followers in song.

The Society for the Advancement of Inflammatory Consciousness was born, and claimed as its goal nothing less than "Cosmic Erotic Ecstasy." Mirror Mirror's first full-length album (on Cochon Records) is a schizophrenic exploration into the multiple personalities and points of views of the (fictional?) Society, as well as aspiring followers, runaways, hustlers, partygoers, and music producers. The compositions are lush and complex, blending folky sing-alongs, sinister rock songs, cult lullabies, robotic choral pieces, and meditative interludes.

Ultimately, the album raises more questions than it answers: Are these people real or imaginary? Are they visionaries or are deluded? Capitalizing on the tension between devotion and terror, Mirror Mirror narrate the rise and fall of a utopia...

In the past few years, MM has played shows around NYC, LA, Paris and Miami, with bands like Get Hustle, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Japanther, Aleks and the Drummer, Lansing Dreiden and Telepathe (in which Ryan is also the guitarist). In the run up to their album release on September 16, MM will be releasing a seven-inch in the UK (on Half Machine) on June 16 and planning a summer tour in the US and Europe. - RCRD LBL

The beautiful guitar melody with which Mirror Mirror’s ‘New Horizons’ begins contains in the revolution of its tones the complete structure of what is to come, like a strange flower slowly unfolding its crimson petals to reveal a wonderful piece of psyche-folk that seduces us with the scent of the United States of America, Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd and early Brian Eno balladry, stuff that never fails to tie our hearts into a knot reminding us of Liars at their sweetest, or the esoteric chrysalis of an enigma metamorphosing into a butterfly fluttering in the edge of our consciousness wondering what to become next, something pretty and pregnant with possibilities and mystery, a metaphor & a spell blown off the face of reality with a puff of smoke as the song finishes, all we are left with is metaphors skirting in the periphery of the weird and lovely transparent radiation it creates, why bother with words, just press play again. - 20 Jazz Funk Greats

Mirror Mirror

The Society For The Advancement Of Inflammatory Consciousness

So think of the weirdest bits of ‘Oracular Spectacular’. You know, the mind-expansive, lip-wibbling, acid-reflecting moments. The bits that tipped into the dark netherworld of Syd Barrett and Peter Green. It’s these fragments of brain-altering consciousness and freak-out psychedelia that Mirror Mirror have harvested and made their own on their darkly beautiful debut album.

Hailing from the same scene that birthed the leftfield, minimal electro of Telepathe (Ryan Lucero plays in both bands) their sound is, like, totally cosmic but, somewhat surprisingly considering teetering-on-the-edge psych-pop has saturated the hipper end of ’08, also never gets too much to take in. ‘Don Coyote’s Confession’ begins like a hymnal bad Beach Boy chant with the duo intoning “I’m thinking of buying a gun” with enough Charles Manson-like menace to make sure you’ve double-locked your door at night. It then flips into a Super Furry Animals-like rocker before shapeshifting into a leftover Last Shadow Puppets tune. ‘Eugene’ splutters with the deviant sexual spirits of Of Montreal, ‘Darling Nikki’ and ‘Sexy Sadie’. Images spill out as fast as the music flips and grinds direction, genre and mood. This is a very special record; in fact, it’s one of the year’s best psych-rock concoctions.

Priya Elan
- NME