Fall is upon us. It’s the time of year where everything seems to slow to quiet contemplation as the leaves turn and die. Slow motion diving as their brittle remains dust the forest floors and residential lawns in a last act of authority and condemnation. Fall brings chilled walks in the mornings and evenings while the sun hides behind steely clouds preparing for the cold, short days and long, frigid nights of winter.
Musician, producer, and studio wizard extraordinaire Jonas Munk has given us the perfect soundtrack for the autumnal afternoons and brisk evenings ahead. From his studio in Odense, Denmark he’s cultivated and curated yet another slice of ambient bliss in the form of Mirror Phase.
Picking up where he left off with his excellent 2021 album Altered Light, Munk has put together an ethereal sound world created with guitar and synthesizer loops and then put them through blinking lights, the passage of time, and the vast of the circuital cosmos until these loops take on a life of their own. What they resemble -or better yet what they instill in the listener- is a gauzy, weightless sound world. A place of peace and quiet solitude. A musical universe where the mind can slow down, clear out, and reconfigure from the weight of the world outside of it. Mirror Phase is a musical reset button for the psyche.
Over 8 tracks and nearly 50 minutes, Jonas Munk builds wavering sonic shifts. They move in slow motion like clouds clearing the way for something big and mysterious. “Dawn Layer”, “Transition”, and “Aureolin” take their time rising into focus. These amorphous melodies roll and shift, giving the feeling of rising and falling. A weightless dream of thought and emotion. “Rise” and album closer “Return To Nowhere” sit in echoing reverberation and mysterious tones, touching on almost the hazy psychedelia of Munk’s other musical project Billow Observatory. A musical Utopia that paints a vision of the future where sound and light become one.
The epic musical movement here is title track “Mirror Phase”, a nearly 18-minute musical journey. The song cascades slowly, blossoming into a buzzing and slow motion masterstroke. There’s elements of 70s electronic pioneers like Klaus Schulze and Manuel Göttsching, while also touching on even the analog tones of Pink Floyd’s “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” and its opening synth-heavy salvo. This is a heady sound world that brings you in and envelopes the listener.
Mirror Phase is yet another masterpiece from Jonas Munk. It’s ambient textures and experimental tones come together beautifully, forming the perfect soundtrack for deep contemplation and meditative headspace.
‘Mirror Phase’ arrives 10/25 from Azure Vista Records. Order the vinyl, CD, or digital here.
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