Back in 2018, Jaime Fennelly released Bellowing Sun, his sixth album under the Mind Over Mirrors moniker and his second expanded ensemble album on the bounce, after 2017’s Undying Color. Particles, Peds & Poresis a return to a solo setup for Jaime. The album began life a couple of years ago as a digital-only release after sitting for some time while Jaime focused on his Setting trio (with Nathan Bowles and Joseph Westerlund).
As you would expect for a solo work, Particles is a more spacious affair than Bellowing Sun, with Jaime’s synthesizer and harmonium work often creating a meditative, undulating electronic soundscape that certainly suggests the pastoral environment that guitarist Nathan Salsburg mentions in his accompanying essay. In fact, the artist that sprang to mind when listening to this album was UK-based Craven Faults, particularly his Bounds album, which focuses on journeying through the north of England.
The organic nature of this music – a sound we know something of through Setting – blends beautifully with a more beats-focused electronic style in places: take One Wing Beat, a plus-seven-minute number that uses a pulsing drone note to support stretches of almost fun beeps and higher drones. It has the effect of showing us something profound amid the mundanity of life.
Elsewhere, the Blank Vessels trio are the beating heart of the album, placed at the start, the middle and near the end. I is a multi-layered drone piece in the nature of organ music, giving the song an ecclesiastical character that the occasional strange fuzz counteracts. II is a longer tune, celestial in nature, with broad, overworldly pulses that give the music an awe-inspiring quality and a soft two-note bass part that grounds it. III is a very different beast, built on (I think) Jaime’s Indian pedal harmonium, with slivers of light, crystalline notes and bubbling sounds beneath, giving the music a very natural but almost scientific or microscopic character.
In fact, towards the end of the record is where things get weirder, with Blank Vessels III going straight into the final track Sulphur Firedots, an almost nine-minute spacious shaker that uses fast keyed notes, electronic beats and distant low notes to paint something of a sci-fi soundscape. As the song develops, high beeps sprinkle the sound, bringing a sense of urgency to the music that fades two-thirds through to allow a fun, meaty synth line in.
This sense of abandon wonderfully balances songs like Organoleptic, a patient, sparse synth piece that eschews any strangeness for a strong core of meditative flow. It’s that blend and the feeling that Jaime is all over the music he makes that makes this set so very satisfying
Particles, Peds & Pores (February 6th, 2026) Hands in the Dark HITD 079
Pre-Order via Bandcamp: https://mindovermirrors.bandcamp.com/album/particles-peds-pores