#Jaime Fennelly
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Mind Over Mirrors — Particles, Peds & Pores (Mind Over Mirrors)
Like the Fairport Convention song goes, “It all comes round again.” Particles, Peds & Pores brings Mind Over Mirrors full circle to its beginnings as the solo project of Jaime Fennelly (Peeesseye, Setting). Whether that represents the closing of said circle or a new start, the recording stands on its own as an absorbing work of self-contained kosmische music.
Fennelly first conceived Mind Over Mirrors after decamping from Brooklyn NY to an island in the Salish Sea in 2007. Residing off the grid in a series of cabins dependent upon solar energy, Fennelly began composing solo pieces for electricity-independent keyboards, most particularly a harmonium. After shifting once more to Chicago in 2010, he added synthesizer and pedals to the harmonium and began playing the music before audiences. A sequence of strikingly packaged LPs on Digitalis, Hands In The Dark, Immune, and Paradise Of Bachelors documented Mind Over Mirrors’ evolution from a sonic expression of a mind expanding in solitude to an ensemble of singers and multi-instrumentalists whose ritualistic performances required the resources of an art museum in order to be fully realized.
In 2018, Fennelly stepped away from the stage, and pursued some geographical and priority shifts; nowadays he spends a lot of time in North Carolina. But the Particles, Peds & Pores recording credits show that he never quit playing. Between 2019 and 2022 he composed and recorded eight pieces for harmonium and synth, the same instruments he had used when Mind Over Mirrors started out a decade earlier. But while the instrumentation is the same, the vibe has changed. Early Mind Over Mirrors music often foregrounded the physical action required to sustain its sound; the bellows-driven rhythms evoked the experience of long march through forests dampened by salty ocean air. The new record opens with “Blank Vessels I,” a layered wall of slow-moving, continuous sound; you could pair it with a sunrise, and the music would not be shamed. “One Wing Beat” introduces a defined beat, which sounds synthetic in tone but hand-played in cadence.
But even though it is not alone among Particles, Peds & Pores’ tracks in covering some ground, the music inevitably returns to moments of appreciative stasis comprising sounds stacked one over another. If the original Mind Over Mirrors recordings sounded like a person consciously leaning into a remote, solitary experience, these express a comfort with that state, a sort of sun-lit, piney satori. However, coincident with the completion of this music, Fennelly started jamming with Nathan Bowles and Joe Westerlund, and Setting was born. After a decade of being the man in charge, he's back to being one of the band. And while they’ve pursued an expanding touring schedule and released a couple recordings in 2023, Fennelly has played just one Mind Over Mirrors gig and quietly released Particles, Peds & Pores on Bandcamp. If the project stops here, one might feel a bit of disappointment that there’s no physical edition. But the music itself feels satisfying and complete.
Bill Meyer
#mind over mirrors#particles peds and pores#bill meyer#albumreview#dusted magazine#Jaime Fennelly#drone#harmonia#setting#Peeesseye
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Setting - At Black Mountain College Museum
Shone A Rainbow Light On, the debut long-player from Setting, was an instant 2023 favorite. No surprise, really: they're a new band, but Nathan Bowles, Jaime Fennelly and Joe Westerlund have been reliable sources for outstanding sounds for years now. Together in this improvisational trio, they move as one, finding radical new musical paths to follow. Bowles is a longtime member of the avant-Appalachian group Pelt, and there are similar vibes, but Setting has its own idiosyncratic momentum and impulses — they make me think of an American Necks. A good thing! And as great as Rainbow is, this hour-long live recording from last fall might be even better, showing off the locked in/zoned out rapport that the trio shares. Immense, immersive, awesome. Highly recommended.
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Mind Over Mirrors - Undying Color
The new album by the ever-evolving project of Jaime Fennelly is his most ambitious and spellbinding set of roiling, meditative recordings to date, and the first to supplement his foundational arsenal of Indian pedal harmonium, analog synthesizers, and incantatory voices with a full ensemble, including Janet Beveridge Bean (Eleventh Dream Day), Jim Becker (Califone), Haley Fohr (Circuit des Yeux), and Jon Mueller (Death Blues). Undying Color braids folk and formal, praise and play, within its heady swells and troughs, invoking American vernacular musical traditions and pulsating avant-garde electronics alike. With prayerful patience and ceremonial gravity, it conjures and celebrates the cyclical rhythms of nature: tidal surges, human breathing, cicadas in the wilderness gloaming.
#Mind Over Mirrors#Undying Color#jaime fennelly#electronic#synthesizers#raga#harmonium#drone#minimalism#2017#chicago
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Mind Over Mirrors – Zeitgebers
Jaime Fennelly önderliğindeki Chicago kökenli topluluk Mind Over Mirrors, Iron and Wine ve Califone ile çalışmış olan Jim Becker, Freakwater ve Eleventh Dream Day gruplarında yer alan Janet Beveridge Bean ve de Death Blues grubundan Jon Mueller’dan oluşuyor. 6 Nisanda Bellowing Sun albümünü paylaşacak olan Mind Over Mirrors, Almanca’da “zamanlayıcı” anlamına gelen Zeitgebers şarkısını duyurdu.
#mind over mirrors#zeitgebers#belowing sun#new song#new music#yeni şarkı#yeni müzik#music#musica#müzik#müzik haberi#musik
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rules | Chris Forsyth & the Broken Mirrors Motel Band (cf / doug mccombs / jaime fennelly / areif sless-kitain) Live at The Hideout on 2019-07-13 https://t.co/NUZzWxfxvZ
— joel berk (@pfcidb) July 19, 2019
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MANAS meets MIND OVER MIRRORS this Wednesday night at Mothlight!!! @mindovermirrors @dorjitashii #Repost @themothlight with @get_repost ・・・ Last Second Show Announcement! @mindovermirrors Jaime Fennelly will be performing with MANAS as a special trio collaboration here THIS Wednesday Nov. 28th w/ MANAS @dorjitashii @thom_nguyen__ !! 🎹 ☀️ 🌈 Mind Over Mirrors is the solitary reeling of Jaime Fennelly. His new record, Belowing Sun, is described as "a complex and beautiful synth-and-drone time warp." Don't miss it live at The Mothlight on Wednesday. https://mindovermirrors.bandcamp.com/ •#• He'll be joined by MANAS - The duo of Tashi Dorji (guitar) and Thom Nguyen (drums) as they explore lots of improvisational ground, extreme sideways expansions of sonics texture. http://feedingtuberecords.com/releases/manas/ (at The Mothlight) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bqp8jLsBBPp/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1tngri73pecb6
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Mind Over Mirrors: Bellowing Sun
Jaime Fennelly assembles a full-band and a grand vision for his sixth album as Mind Over Mirrors, a complex and beautiful synth-and-drone time warp.
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Undying Color by Mind Over Mirrors
Undying Color by Mind Over Mirrors
Archiving an Album of the Day from last week on Bandcamp Daily. Jaime Fennelly's Mind Over Mirrors project leaves some fresh treads. Contemporary neo-classical gestures bellied with harmonium and synth, graced with treatments by an all-star cast of Chicago avant-gardists. Read my review in its entirety here.
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Setting — Shone a Rainbow Light On (Paradise of Bachelors)
Photo by Will Warasila
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Setting is a new collaborative project from three mainstays of psychedelic drone. Nathan Bowles of Pelt and Black Twig Pickers, Jaime Fennelly of Mind Over Mirrors and Joe Westerlund of Califone, Sylvan Esso and Jake Xerxes Fussell join force for four extended improvisations which fall closer to Fennelly’s ecstatic harmonium meditations than the more rustic, Americana-touching forms Bowles and Westerlund have primarily been associated with.
A drone can be a spiritual experience—and making one together can bring disparate musicians together. It requires open ears and unhurried patience, a willingness to notice small gradations in tone, an attention to one another. Thus the first cut, “We Center,” is, on its surface, the most static of the four, the least varied with the smallest amount of percussive energy. And yet, it also feels very necessary, a primordial soup out of which all the other cuts come. The long questioning tones (likely synthesizer, but who really knows?) lift out of the liquid drone like aquarian dinosaurs, blinking slowly before diving back down. The drums natter subliminally between lapping, washing tones. The piece bubbles with possibility, as the three players find a way of interacting that honors stillness.
“Zoetropics” toys more overtly with melody, weaving prickly percussive stringed instruments into an oncoming rush of forward motion. It’s the single, at least as far as albums like this have singles, and it moves and cavorts and glistens. It sounds a bit like Oren Ambarchi’s Shebang, as shimmering auras lift out of massed strummed and plucked sounds; the dots connect, the pixels form into rainbows. “A Sun Harp,” which follows, is equally, pizzicato, equally lovely, with the unearthly twang of zither, the trebly purity of high piano notes, the agitated patter of drums coalescing in airy, light-filled beauty.
It all comes to a head in “Fog Glossaries,” a moody landscape where tones loom up out of obscurity, surge, vibrate and dissipate, much like objects in thick mist. A bell rings out at widely spaced intervals, cutting through a haze of overtones, and the overall affect is elegiac and beautiful. You could say that not much happens in Shone a Rainbow Light On, that it moves slowly and doesn’t progress in any linear way, but that would be missing out on the blessed stillness and calm that lives in these tracks.
Jennifer Kelly
#setting#shone a rainbow light on#paradise of bachelors#jennifer kelly#albumreview#dusted magazine#nathan bowles#jaimie fennelly#joe westerlund#drone#pelt#mind over matter#califone
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Glenn Jones - Assembly, Minneapolis, Minnesota, October 9, 2018
Head over to the excellent Southern Jukebox site for a warm reel-to-reel tape of American Primitive maestro Glenn Jones, playing live in Minneapolis last year. Some selections from his recent/highly recommended Thrill Jockey LPs, in addition to a handful of very tasty new tunes (and some typically entertaining stories as well).
And hey, while you’re over there, check out Southern Jukebox’s recent tape of a stellar triple bill — Chris Forsyth (feat. Doug McCombs, Jaime Fennelly and Areif Sless-Kitain), IOSIS and Cassini. The latter is a new Minnesota band led by Steven Palmer, whose Unblinking Sun record from a few years back is definitely worth getting into ... They sound great, a nice mix of choogle and motorik (and the Relatively Clean Rivers cover is fab).
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ADA Spotlight - February 2, 2017
This edition focuses on acts performing in Chicago live in the coming months. Listen, discover, and support these artists and our venues!
1. Jay Som - 1 Billion Dogs
At the age of 22, Bay-Area musician Melina Duterte has already toured with the likes of Mitski, Japanese Breakfast, and Peter Bjorn & John. Her proper debut of emotive, fuzz-infused rock Everybody Works will be available on March 10 via Polyvinyl.
Spotify | Bandcamp | Soundcloud
Go see Jay Som at Schuba’s with The Courtneys on March 24
2. Vagabon - Minneapolis
The main force behind Vagabon is Laetitia Tamko, a New Yorker-via-Cameroon whose inspiration is drawn from her distinct life experience. Her new album Infinite Worlds is out on February 24 on Father/Daughter Records.
Go see Vagabon at Schuba’s with Allison Crutchfield & The Fizz on March 31
Spotify | Bandcamp | Soundcloud
3. Mind Over Mirrors - Restore & Slip
The sound project of Chicago’s Jaime Fennelly fuses meditative folk and avant-garde drone for a fully immersive audio experience. His latest Undying Color features guests artists from all corners of music including Circuit des Yeux’s Haley Fohr, Janet Beveridge Bean (Eleventh Dream Day), Jim Becker (Califone), and Jon Mueller (Death Blues, Volcano Choir). Pre-order it here.
Go see Mind Over Mirrors with Brokeback at Constellation on March 3
Spotify | Bandcamp | Soundcloud
4. John Andrews & The Yawns - Drivers
John Andrews’ music has always a classic rock acquaintanceship that comforts while entertaining that stems from his participation in countless bands Quilt, Woods, and Widowspeak. The new LP Bad Posture will be available in April.
Go see John Andrews & the Dawns open for Hand Habits at Schuba’s on February 21
Spotify | Soundcloud
5. Molly Burch - Wrong For You
Austin-based Molly Burch sings and plays with a timeless sensibility, her resonant voice matching perfectly with dusty guitar reverberations. Her debut Please Be Mine will be available February 17 on Captured Tracks.
Go see Molly Burch opening for Tim Darcy of Ought at Empty Bottle on March 23
Spotify | Bandcamp | Soundcloud
6. mouse on the keys - Earache
Taking on jazz with an post-rock antagonism, this Japanese trio doles out edgy instrumentals with a freedom not seen often enough in music. Track down their new EP Out of Body out now on Topshelf Records.
Go see mouse on the keys with LITE at Lincoln Hall on March 14
Spotify | Bandcamp | Soundcloud
Bonus: Stream Molly Burch’s video for “Downhearted” here!
youtube
#playlist#spotlight#jay som#vagabon#mind over mirrors#john andrews & the yawns#molly burch#mouse on the keys
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‘To the Edges’ by Mind Over Mirrors
The new album by the ever-evolving project of Jaime Fennelly is his most ambitious and spellbinding set of roiling, meditative recordings to date, and the first to supplement his foundational arsenal of Indian pedal harmonium, analog synthesizers, and incantatory voices with a full ensemble, including Janet Beveridge Bean (Eleventh Dream Day), Jim Becker (Califone), Haley Fohr (Circuit des Yeux), and Jon Mueller (Death Blues). "Undying Color" braids folk and formal, praise and play, within its heady swells and troughs, invoking American vernacular musical traditions and pulsating avant-garde electronics alike. With prayerful patience and ceremonial gravity, it conjures and celebrates the cyclical rhythms of nature: tidal surges, human breathing, cicadas in the wilderness gloaming.
Bandcamp
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