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CD Feature/ Mirror: "Viking Burial for a French Car"

  Tobias

Silence. Morning? Night-time? No-one knows, no-one needs to know... all there is is silence.

„Viking Burial For A French Car“ emerges in the vein of its numerous predecessors. But something is different, very different though the term „difference“ is connoted in a special way in the Mirror-universe. Christoph Heemann, Andrew Chalk and friends (this time: David Keenan, Gavin Laird and Alex Neilson) always managed setting circles and recurrence to music – with the most minimal complexity resulting in intangible pulchritude. This time, the music has something final – referring to the title. „Viking Burial For A French Car“ contains two tracks: the first one – three seconds of silence. The title-track clocks in at around 38 minutes. The first ten minutes evoke the image of a foggy lake-scene, composed with flute-like (shakuhachi?) drones – are absolutely stunning. You can compare this first third with Nurse With Wound’s masterpiece „Funeral Music For Perez Prado“; and then the title begins to make sense: metallic scratching – the rusted car paves its way through the lulling fog of drones. The soulless metal slowly rolls by, reaching a peak and you can imagine David Jackmann behind the wheel – with his bag full of Organum-memories. The clattering skelleton fades away – slowly... slowly... slowly... dissappears into the fog which is unimpressed by the ceremony, though the drones sound as if they have swallowed the car deep inside. They’re more heavy as in the beginning. Fade out. Slow fade out. Very slow fade out.

Like all Mirror-records before, this one gives you the chance to stop everything you do and become an observer. It seems like some kind of final statement in the Mirror-universe – it’s darker and more melancholic than everything they’ve done before. Highly recommended!

By Mirko Uhlig

Homepage: Mirror / Christoph Heemann
Homepage: Mirror at the Plinkety Plonk label