Release Date: March 19, 2012
Foreign Body is the first album by Mirroring, an ambient music duo composed of Liz Harris and Jesy Fortino. Like most ambient music, the album is… ambient, and for the most part comes with all the pros and cons that the genre normally exhibits.
The pros: the music is entirely inoffensive. You could put Foreign Body on in a restaurant, at a party, in a dimly lit bar, or pretty much anywhere else where music is acceptable (and maybe some places it isn’t, if you’re quiet enough) and no one would complain. It’s soft, gentle melodies linger in the air, offending no one.
Foreign Body works hard to maintain a continuing sound that unifies the whole piece. Song transitions are never jarring or distracting, but come naturally. This is especially important for slower, acoustic music, so it’s good that it’s done well here.
And the cons: actually immersing yourself in the music is incredibly boring. This ain’t no Sigur Ros: soundscapes aren’t sweeping or intricate; they just flow from one thing to the next semi-aimlessly, and while that’s great if you aren’t actually paying any attention to the music (again, it’s good for background noise) there just isn’t enough depth of sound to make a full, rich listening experience.
You might not notice when one song becomes the next because they are all so similar. Cohesive sound can be a double edged sword: if there’s not enough continuity an album will become uncomfortably sporadic and unpredictable, but too much similarity between songs will leave listeners bored and listless, drifting in an out of each song as it drones into the next.
Unfortunately, Foreign Body tends toward the latter, and while there are differences between each song, they are few and far between, leaving us with something closer to one 40-minute song, instead of the nine individual songs given in the track listing.
After all its pros and cons, Foreign Body is a good enough album to just put on and sit through, but you’ll want to be doing something else at the same time, like reading a book or solving a particularly engaging puzzle. If you absolutely love quiet, ambient music you might find yourself enjoying Foreign Body, but if you don’t already live for sparse, slow and subtle arrangements, there’s absolutely nothing here that’s going to change your mind.
Mirroring – Foreign Body tracklist:
- “Drowning the Call”
- “Fell Sound”
- “Silent From Above”
- “Cliffs”
- “Mirror of Our Sleeping”
- “Mine”
