Mirage Mirage

Description

3rd album by the supergroup built around Tenniscoats feat. members of Notwist, Jam Money and Joasihno. With "Mirage Mirage", avant-pop quintet Spirit Fest gifts their listeners with their richest, deepest record to date. It's no surprise when you consider the group's membership: Saya and Ueno, aka the duo Tenniscoats; Markus Acher, best known as singer of The Notwist; Mat Fowler, who plays with Jam Money and Bons; and Cico Beck, who's making music with Joasinho, Aloa Input & The Notwist. If that feels like a heavyweight line-up, that's because it is - yet the overarching mood of Spirit Fest is one of lightness and joy, of experiment and pure pop pleasure.

Sessions for the album were split between the Tenniscoats' Tokyo home studio in November 2018, and a small apartment studio in Munich in June 2019. There's more here than just avant-pop: see the pronounced folksy lilt to "The Snow Falls On Everyone"; or "Mohikone", a gorgeous instrumental, droplets of piano pattering amongst a plangent acoustic guitar. The seven-minute "Zenbu Honto (Every Thing Is Everything)" is a spiralling psychedelic pop mantra, with field recordings and slithering electronics tracing a path under the scrub-growth of guitar, piano and drums.

There are guest appearances from Micha Acher (The Notwist, Tied & Tickled Trio) on trumpet, and Aiko Okamoto, who takes part in the choral rounds of the album's closing tune, "Saigo Song". Whichever way you approach it, though, the guiding force of Spirit Fest is friendship and collaboration, giving life to collective dreaming. Summing things up, Markus says, "This record is a lot about relationships, from different perspectives, about wondrous things that happen to everybody sometimes, about shared experiences (like the snow falling on everyone). I think of summer when I listen to it, because we recorded in summer, but more like a long sleepless summer night with lots of talking and music? A psychedelic feeling."

The creative dynamic that makes for those spirited nights of talking and sharing is all there in a story that Mat tells about first meeting Markus, "outside a Paul Klee exhibition we then went on to visit. One painting always sticks with me, 'The Adventure Ship'. I still feel an affinity between this painting and our own travels on the good ship Spirit Fest. All aboard!" Vinyl is 2LP Gatefold sleeve, incl. printed inners Incl. DL code

Description

3rd album by the supergroup built around Tenniscoats feat. members of Notwist, Jam Money and Joasihno. With "Mirage Mirage", avant-pop quintet Spirit Fest gifts their listeners with their richest, deepest record to date. It's no surprise when you consider the group's membership: Saya and Ueno, aka the duo Tenniscoats; Markus Acher, best known as singer of The Notwist; Mat Fowler, who plays with Jam Money and Bons; and Cico Beck, who's making music with Joasinho, Aloa Input & The Notwist. If that feels like a heavyweight line-up, that's because it is - yet the overarching mood of Spirit Fest is one of lightness and joy, of experiment and pure pop pleasure.

Sessions for the album were split between the Tenniscoats' Tokyo home studio in November 2018, and a small apartment studio in Munich in June 2019. There's more here than just avant-pop: see the pronounced folksy lilt to "The Snow Falls On Everyone"; or "Mohikone", a gorgeous instrumental, droplets of piano pattering amongst a plangent acoustic guitar. The seven-minute "Zenbu Honto (Every Thing Is Everything)" is a spiralling psychedelic pop mantra, with field recordings and slithering electronics tracing a path under the scrub-growth of guitar, piano and drums.

There are guest appearances from Micha Acher (The Notwist, Tied & Tickled Trio) on trumpet, and Aiko Okamoto, who takes part in the choral rounds of the album's closing tune, "Saigo Song". Whichever way you approach it, though, the guiding force of Spirit Fest is friendship and collaboration, giving life to collective dreaming. Summing things up, Markus says, "This record is a lot about relationships, from different perspectives, about wondrous things that happen to everybody sometimes, about shared experiences (like the snow falling on everyone). I think of summer when I listen to it, because we recorded in summer, but more like a long sleepless summer night with lots of talking and music? A psychedelic feeling."

The creative dynamic that makes for those spirited nights of talking and sharing is all there in a story that Mat tells about first meeting Markus, "outside a Paul Klee exhibition we then went on to visit. One painting always sticks with me, 'The Adventure Ship'. I still feel an affinity between this painting and our own travels on the good ship Spirit Fest. All aboard!" Vinyl is 2LP Gatefold sleeve, incl. printed inners Incl. DL code