Chorusing – Half Mirror
Western Vinyl – 13 August 2021
With songs dating back 10 years, Half Mirror, the first release by Chorusing, reflects on one’s inability to relive something outside of the moment. Memories shift and change, just like Matthew O’Connell. His self-described “confessional folk” is a far cry from the metal drumming of this youth from Palmyra, Indiana. He admits, “It’s so pure and unself-conscious, felt in the body and not in the head.” He’s also a mathematician and spent six months in Budapest, Hungary. Finally, in 2011, he headed to Ashville, North Carolina, where he worked for Moog Music calibrating and building synthesizers, not to mention testing vintage analogue delay chips.
Building his own digital modal synth, dubbed Balsam, because it provides a musical representation of the thick, resinous sap flowing from fir trees, Balsam creates a tension by developing slow sliding note bends and gradually resolving chords. Used extensively on Half Mirror, it creates a sonic palette similar to Mark Hollis, Arthur Russell and John Martyn. Beginning with “Cold,” one gets the sense of listening in on someone experimenting with the nature of sound. O’Connell sings little more than “I wade in,” yet how he extends the phrase offers the possibility that what he is entering is more than water, but his own memories.
Recorded in a single day, “Watching the Beams” reflects on travelling through a subway tunnel and having a panic attack as the train stalled. What follows is how he was able to relieve the attack by listening to “sounds passing in and out of focus, lights flashing through the windows, the noise of the tracks.” Despite using an arpeggiator, drum machine and fuzz pedal, not to mention a reverse delay on the vocals, it still lives in a folk world, even if it’s on the edges.
Following with “Blue Ridge,” a song that locates more closely to the folk world, O’Connell recalls times past. “Writing the song was my way of dealing with feelings of longing and nostalgia—an attempt to replace them with warmth and appreciation for a fleeting moment in time.” One of the elements that make this collection so special is how O’Connell manages to connect all the songs in a way that makes them feel like a suite rather than a collection of disparate tracks.
Clearly, O’Connell has spent months and perhaps years learning the lessons he uses on Half Mirror. Some were taught by playing with his brother Joe of Elephant Micah, and some have been learned just by the time spent during his formative years. “I think that period instilled two things in me: a long attention span, and the ability to work obsessively on something in solitude.”
From his home in the hills of North Carolina, recording as Chorusing, Matthew O’Connell has created a piece of music that manages to create new language and meaning by meticulously crafting the sounds and lyrics that make Half Mirror something totally unique.
Bandcamp: https://chorusing.bandcamp.com/album/half-mirror
Order: https://smarturl.it/kfkzwm
Photo Credit: Hannah Rainey