A project begun on an island in Washington State, Mind Over Mirrors springs from the imagination of Jaime Fennelly, who now resides in Chicago. Across five limited edition releases, Fennelly has performed alone. And while Undying Color, his sixth album (and first for Paradise of Bachelors) also began as a solo excursion (this time with Fennelly decamping to southwestern Wisconsin), he then went back into the studio with a full-fledged ensemble, including members from Eleventh Dream Day, Califone, Circuit des Yeux and Jon Mueller of Death Blues, to add more color to his drones and drifts.
But while Mind Over Mirrors now sounds like a live group, their influences don’t reference bands per se as much as they do iconoclastic American composers of the 20th century. Mirrors’ bio references G.I. Gurdjieff’s esoteric harmonium music, but almost every piece on Undying Color hearkens back to the likes of Terry Riley, Harry Partch, Laurie Spiegel and Henry Flynt, to name a few. And at the center of it all remains Fennelly’s hard-pumping harmonium. His drone hovers over opener “Restore & Slip,” the album’s most energetic number. It then swiftly scales up thanks to a tumbling drum kit beat and some furious fiddling that evokes the sawing fury of Henry Flynt and his penchant for hillbilly minimalism. Together it all builds to an ecstatic and buzzing peak that the album is hard-pressed to replicate for the remainder of the album.
While Fennelly’s Indian pedal harmonium has always been the centerpiece of Mind Over Mirrors, with Undying Color he adds in an Oberheim synth and shows a wider range and malleability. On “Gray Clearer,” he has a tone that wheezes and expands like Pauline Oliveros’s bandoneon against a shuffling, shamanic thump. For “Splintering,” Fennelly mimics the antigravity properties of Laurie Spiegel’s analog components, floating free alongside rubbed singing bowls and a wordless vocal from Eleventh Dream Day and Freakwater member Janet Beveridge Bean. His harmonium swirls and slowly accrues a thick shoegaze fuzz on the flickering “600 Miles Around.” And on “Glossolaliac,” Fennelly’s keys churn and cycle like one of Terry Riley’s vintage all-night flights, soon synching with violin and Haley Fohr’s voice. It’s the clear album highlight, a cosmic trip that condenses such expansive minimalist explorations into a delectably concise three-minute length.
Inversely, where the album stumbles is on the lengthy 12-minute song, “Gravity Wake.” The Oberheim yawns and crests, a steady snare pattern giving the piece its processional rhythm. Bean and Fohr’s voices entwine in murmurs about space and Einstein’s theory of general relativity, Fohr’s more dramatic voice giving gravitas to the command: “Be the gravity wake.” Tasteful and restrained as Fennelly’s playing is, here it doesn’t have quite enough energy or movement to sustain such a runtime. That said, the expanded palette and membership bodes well for future explorations.
