Mirrored Daughters

Description

Fika Recordings presents 'Mirrored Daughters' - an album of lo-fi folk-pop and exploratory woodland meditations by members of Firestations, The Leaf Library and Marlody.Melodic and bright music inspired as much by travels through Epping Forest as spontaneous collaboration, these 11 tracks offer an intriguing journey through (and beyond) the woods – crystalline melancholy interspersed with benign drone rituals.The music on their eponymous debut album eschews the big-screen production of the artists' other bands and revels in the instinctive, warm sonics of acoustic instruments; guitars, cellos, a clarinet, harmonium and bells provide the earthy soundworld for these spacious songs.Starting life as quickly recorded acoustic guitar and bass pieces by Lewis Young (Leaf Library drummer), these were then picked up by Mike Cranny (guitarist and singer in fellow Walthamstow travellers Firestations), cellist Hannah Reeves and fellow Leaf Library member Matt Ashton. Each added parts remotely, conceived in their home studios, before vocalist Marlody added her crystalline vocals to the music; layered harmonies and twisted, looped phrases that stitch the story together.The band name, taken from lyrics laid down by Mike during the lyric-writing process, perfectly sums up the atmosphere conjured here, neither sinister nor wholly comforting, unknown yet alluring. As author Will Ashon says in the album’s liner notes (an excerpt from his book Strange Labyrinth published by Granta Books), “Everything is constantly changing in Epping Forest. There is the annual cycle of growth and death, of course, and the daily iteration of that in new buds, new flowers, new leaves, dead flowers, dead leaves and so on, the tiny, inconsequential shifts that gradually add up to something more.From the album opener, the gently ominous 'Mirror Descend', through to the hopeful and skyward-looking final track of 'Mirror Ascend', this collection of songs and rituals leaves the space for the listener to make their own journey through a half-real, half-imagined landscape, before emerging changed, re-entering the boundaries on the edge of the suburban sprawl.