“Pleasant’s is an interesting adjective in music writing. To describe an album as pleasant always seems, to me at least, like a criticism. It implies that said album is unchallenging, perhaps a little dull and probably instantly forgettable. So what of its opposite? If we take pleasant to mean “boring’ are we then to describe anything exciting as “unpleasant’? Surely not. And yet there is a persistent mythology which claims that anything pleasant cannot be meaningful. I suspect it all dates back to “rock and roll’ or least punk (though you’ll find a similar ethos ingrained in modernism). “Rock and Roll’ is (or was) a counter-cultural movement, a teenaged rebellion. To be “pleasant’s then was to be comfortable, bourgeois, complacent – in short, to be the enemy.
But it is 2012. Neither rock nor punk has had any real currency as a voice of rebellion for some decades. So, it is without criticism or irony that I say Music by Mirrors, the latest offering form electronic duo Mazmoneth, is “pleasant.’ The album is not boring so much as it is unobtrusive. There are a plethora of tiny details there for anyone who seeks them out but I suspect part of the point is not to do so. The whole album is a wash. It’s basically one drawn out mix, full of tectonically moving synths and lo-fi, trip-hop beats. For the album to be properly appreciatedm it should be taken as it is, as a wash – a warm, comforting bath of pleasant sound to submerge the listener.
Bringing comfort is a noble aim and it seems to be what Mazmoneth do. The duo’ first effort together was on an album of “deep relaxation music used in workshops for severely disabled children.†“Deep Relaxation’ is the kind of blank, New-Age genre tag that (ironically) sets alarm bells going in my head but, thankfully, there is a lot more at play on Music by Mirrors than the tag would suggest. Rather than deep relaxation, the album sounds to me like well engineered come-down music (“shallow relaxation’?). It is laden with fading echoes of club gestures, unaggressive urban beats and warm comforting blankets of synthesizers. I can imagine its presence on big, padded headphones on the last train home from a big night would be an immensely gratifying experience.
Perhaps it’s reductive to only “half listen’ to an album, to treat it as an ambiance or a comedown. Stockhausen made it known that where music “becomes just a means for ambiance, as we say environment, then music becomes a whore†(which probably says a lot more about Stockhausen’ attitude towards women than it does about music) but I completely disagree. Some music functions better as an environment. Of the several times I listened to Music by Mirrors the times I enjoyed it the most where when I let it play out, not giving it too much attention. Music by Mirrors is a prime example of how such music can be deft, subtle, unobtrusive and also completely satisfying.
Henry Andersen
