Twin Mirror was written over a period of two years while composer CC Sorensen was in the process of settling into, then decamping from, and then finally coalescing into their new home in San Antonio, Texas with their partner. The chaos of their life during this period is hardly heard over the chorus of communion that permiates the album though- a potently serene and transportive listening experience. It is impossible to quantify how the disintegrations and fluxations that a person experiences impacts the art they make, but what every dragoons CC battled while recording Twin Mirror, it does not deter from the impression that is a special engagement— precious in its unassuming powers of transcendence.
Where ever you are, physically, when you experience Twin Mirror, your mind will be drawn somewhere else. Almost like you've been caught in the soft enclosure of a pair of giant, overlapping palms, then lifted hundreds of feet into the air and away from the murky soup of anxiety which your days are steeped in. Such an experience would seem terrifying in the abstract, but in practice, it feels like the outcome of a successful rescue mission- A jettisoning of your consciousness out of the prison of your surroundings. A freeing of potential. A domestication of fear. A recasting of one's inherent plasticity into a new mold.
Twin Mirror is a freejazz record in its conception and from, but one that does not scrutinize itself in comparison to its contemporaries. Some parts feel formal, while others are shockingly candid. It is truly free in this respect. The orchestral bows and trumpets all feel like they were recorded in the open air, with a swarm of fireflies as their audience, and the ambiance of sound that envelops the compositional maneuvers featured here overflow like a well expelling its cool, clean contents in some great showing of affective catharsis. A cup with no lip should not spill its contents, and yet I feel absolutely drenched in what has lept over the invisible boundaries that define the edge of this album's sound.
What captivates me most about these compositions is their relaince on the contributions of unwitting amphibious collaborators, by which I mean, field-recorded frog calls- a natural chorus that often seems to supplement the arrangments in the same way a choir of human voices would in a mass or ritual, providing a kind of emotional and sonic rail which the listener can grip while traversing a marsh land of sound- a difuse, guardian spirit that does not have a single geometrical body but whose presence is nonetheless felt in the aggregate, cherished, and wholly relied upon.
Twin Mirror has a kind of fluid excellence to it that I have only ever previously experienced while tasting the wind on my tongue, or the inhaling the smell of sunlight as it runs through the strands of my hair. This album will engage the full range of your current senses, and potentially, point to others that had previously lay inactive and unroused. It certainly helped me wake up and feel centered this morning, and it might just do the same for you- provided you invite it in.