MIRA SNELDER

I have to admit the album cover art isn't very appealing and i was expecting some sort of tribute to cutesy Japanese video game music or something but once i finally got around to checking out this latest release i have to say that the music is not anything that i was expecting at all! Once again MIRA SNELDER handles almost all of the musical duties on this instrumental excursion into vast progressive soundscapes. Sounds heard are derived from electric guitar, classical guitar, analog synthesizer, piano, sequencer, various samples and found objects, FL Studio 20, Audacity, Videopad and Atchafalaya Arcade. Dàzhū makes a guest appearance on erhu and clarinet.

This set of 11 tracks adds up to about 59 minutes of playing time and provides an interesting array of progressive rock compositions experienced in various styles of electronic music dressing. That's right! MIRA adopted the tones, timbres and textures of electronic music styles like IDM, drum & bass and lo-fi hip hop and used all these colorful expressions to decorate fully fueled progressive rock compositions. The results yield something i've never quite heard before. Yeah there are hints of Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, Amon Tobin, Boards of Canada and lo-fi instrumental hip hop acts like Knxwledge that are mixed and melded with the compositional fortitude of classic progressive rock with jagged even jittery moments of spazzed out time signature workouts and other proggy elements.

Fitting well into PA's eclectic prog category, ALTERED ACUITY is a bizarre ride through a sea of electronic sounds crafted in classic prog scores. The music is both easily accessible and simultaneously alienating which makes it bizarrely intriguing to say the least! The musicianship is excellent as MIRA delivers musical motifs like a seasoned classical music at a jazz club and given the unorthodoxies of this bizarre musical chimera, the album takes you through many different moods and stylistic approaches. Ranging from steady groovy beat oriented tracks to highly angular avant-prog ALTERED ACUITY is an excellent example of an independent artist thinking well outside of the box. My kinda musical freakery here! Oh yeah!!!

This will probably be too electronic oriented for many prog traditionalists but this album of intrepid intricacies will definitely appeal to fans of Squarepusher and other jazz-fueled IDM style acts. So many curveballs in this one with hairpin turns and electronic weirdness. While a few tracks like the combo track "Cloistered Recurrence" and "Captain Freeman" may sound a little too synth-poppy in relation to the rest of the album, overall this is an interesting exploration of electronica music in a prog rock context. Fascinating and bold in approach, this is an album that i find quite enjoyable due to its disregard for "normalities" and the outstanding mastery of the instrumentation. A passionate and resolute dedication to higher music appreciation here. Don't let the anime album cover scare you away! The music is excellent.

In general, she technically highlights her fascinating keyboard playing blended with complicatedly percussive (sometimes quirky) synthesizer sounds. Sometimes the electronika sounds like kinda old-fashioned computer game music but this is also good for us (aha I'm a middle-aged guy absorbed in computer games yeah!). The middle part of one of her masterpieces "Wounded Sky" reminds me of something like this, and simultaneously of oldie goodie memories in my young days. Yes today is tough like the grey sky but like her brilliant piano sounds in the first and the last stage things will get better anytime soon - I guess she says so via this suite.

Anyway my favourite track is "The Secret Of Willow Island", that colourful sound treasure box consisting of slightly chemical but heartwarming, beautiful melodic lines and polyrhythmic but acceptable rhythmic bases. Obvious that she provides sorta active music reaction of humanity to us. In "If It Happens Again I Will Know What To Do" we can enjoy her piano-oriented repetitive, plaintive but positive graduation. I suppose "Cormorant And Eagle" would have a suggestion that they live gracefully but do not forget they should survive powerfully, despite the fact the human beings are suffering from such invisible enemies. The collective of her messages should be "You Should Feel So Proud For Making It This Far In Life" a short but dreamy, mystic enlightenment.

This album was released in December 2019 ... she mentions this year be tough for her. And we people all around the world are tough just now. Guess this opus would ring our bells, under the similar situation. Mope rock? No, not at all. Fit for nowadays. Stay safe and fine above all.

One of the benefits of evaluating music on ProgArchives on the PSIKE team (means PSychedleic, Indo-raga, Krautrock and progressive Electronic) is that i get exposed to a lot of suggestions that i NEVER would have had the chance to sniff out on my own. (I'm also on the eclectic prog team as well as the jazz-fusion team). This is one such artist since there is absolutely no info on the internet other than a lonely Bandcamp page that features four albums and thankfully an already existing page on Rate Your Music!

This is obviously a one-person band and MIRA self-describes music and person as such: "Out-of-the-box electronic aural contemplations with a wide variety of influences from rock, jazz and classical music, created by a sentient transgender houseplant from the Netherlands." MIRA was previously involved in the psychedelic rock band Kepler which she co-founded and soon after resorted to become one of those one-person bands that are more common these days.

With three albums in the canon, DIASPORA is the debut which came out in 2017 and seems to have been crafted over a three year period with all the t's crossed and all the i's dotted. Starting off as somewhat of a progressive electronic type of album, this all-instrumental album sallies forth into the world of eclectic progressive rock with classical keyboards, electronic wizardry, episodes of rock heft all fortified with jazz-infused sensibilities that literally sound unique and refreshing. Her influences include National Health, Frank Zappa, Henry Cow, Rascal Reporters, Soft Machine, Brand X, Egg, Area, Cardiacs, ELP, Goldie and György Ligeti thus the strong connection to progressive rock, jazz-fusion (including the Canterbury Scene) and avant-garde classical not to mention the Berlin School progressive electronica.

DIASPORA is a true joy to listen to and despite the avant-garde tag remains accessible in a classic prog sort of way yet is without a doubt very contemporary sounding with a beautiful mixing job and production. The most exciting aspect of DIASPORA is how easily MIRA connects myriads ideas together without missing a beat. The album features nine tracks with the highlight perhaps being the near 16-minute "Interregnum" which features seven distinct parts. The instruments involved included DAW, synthesizer, classical guitar, electric guitar, electric piano and found objects.

What's cool about DIASPORA is it doesn't just copy and paste influences from the past but rather transmogrifies them into something modern and fresh and doesn't forget the emotional connection that classic prog evoked. Nothing wrong with brutal prog and escaping your head avant-weirdness but it's always cool when someone can create beautiful music that is both complex and connects melodic constructs on an emotional level. Ih the case of MIRA SNELDER's debut DIASPORA, that is exactly what she composes. Despite this being a one-woman project, this is very professional sounding and a very warm invitation to explore the following two albums. Bravo!