Mirrors follow the straightest of lines.  Mirrors are attentive to minutiae. Mirrors are parallel to everything and equal to nothing. Mirrors are a vehicle for refraction.  Mirrors are black and/or white. Mirrors are minimally over the top. Mirrors are the practical and aesthetical application of all things mirrors. Mirrors are a pattern for imitation. Mirrors are pop noir.

Mirrors are also 4 debonair young gents from Brighton, artistically driven and redeveloping the powerful synth pop of the early 80’s in a carefully sophisticated manner.  

Merging throbbing synths with electronic drums and the overtly rich vocals of frontman James, they have a collection of songs underwritten with angst that gives a bittersweet connotation to everything they do. Live they connect the dots between art and music to give the audience a conceptual performance that is visually stimulating; striking a balance between the dramatic but not contrived and armed with a cavalry of pop fuelled tracks for you to absorb yourself within, Mirrors are growing into something of an alluring musical pleasure. Of course it’s pretentious, but a little bit of pretention never did anyone any harm, just ask Kraftwerk.

www.4ortherecord.com caught up with James and Ally before they played an impressive 30 minute set as part of the HMV curated ‘Next Big Thing’’ at the Borderline in London’s soho.  They liked my shoes, I liked their explicit thirst for exploring their ideas and we all liked the possibilities of a debut album out this year.  Read on please…

4or The Record have been big supporters of Mirrors since early last year, but for anyone to whom Mirrors remains a mystery tell us about what inspired you to become a band and where did the vision stem from? 

Ally: Basically before Mirrors we were all playing music separately but knew we wanted to do something different. When we met we all sort of had a similar vision of a band that was more than just about being a band on stage performing music.  So we try and spread that ethos across everything we do, whether it be our appearance, the stage, the pictures we take or the visuals we make for all the songs.

James: I think the general idea came from when we were going to gigs and were disappointed with the imagination shown by other bands, so we would look at it and think right if I was in a band what would I want to see? So actually before we made any music we talked about the world we would like to build on and then our music kind of came out of that because our music is very meticulous.

Ally: Exactly, so we have tried to be a bit more three dimensional and do something outside the box by approaching things a little differently.

4TR: Lets talk about pop-noir – the genre you coined yourself in relation to Mirrors.  That in itself alongside the music conjures up comparisons to the minimalistic ideologies of Kraftwerk in the early 80’s and Berlin.  Why pop-noir? And are they direct influences?

James: We felt that we wanted people to know we are a pop band and write pop songs, and whilst maybe the aesthetic and the way they are presented is slightly left-field the fact is we write pop songs and wanted that to come across.  Pop-noir depicts the fact that we make dark almost moody pop songs.  But I think people read into it a lot more because it literally means how it sounds.

Ally: it is just a tag to avoid being pigeonholed in with another tag, although its interesting that you think it conjures up ideas of Berlin and Kraftwerk because yes its obviously something we are interested in but don’t like to talk about too much because again it becomes a derivative 

4TR: People probably read more into it because of the associations with film-noir that immediately comes to mind – it is dark, your aesthetic is fairly colourless yet classic and the entire project has an elegance to it.

James: Exactly, I mean we try to not give away too much information about us and try to keep what people know about the band quite limited.  I think that’s half the fun, if you know everything about a band then there is no interest in it, we have no desire to share every last bit about ourselves 

Ally: I think the product of what we do shows what we like and what we enjoy about life, you don’t have to come to our show to know that yes of course we are influenced by Kraftwerk, but there’s no point in shouting about it because we are influenced by lots of different things

4TR: Other direct comparisons have been made to bands such as OMD and Depeche Mode again relevant to that early 80’s era of synth-pop. 

James: The thing effectively we are interested in is electronic pop with that kind of sparsely built but emotive feeling towards it, so yes that conjures up a lot of early 80s bands but you know they were great, but I think we have a contemporary sound.  If you listen to it we use a mixture of old and modern synthesizers so it isn’t like we have our head firmly stuck in the 80s

Ally: I guess we did look at that to an extent and felt it hasn’t been done well by a British band in like 10 years maybe longer; they were great bands and they were very interesting bands but they are not the only thing we cite as influences.  It’s a very dense sound and we take equal influence from bands like Animal Collective or The Horrors new record so whatever happens we are not digging out our old records all the time.

4TR: Last year you released a couple of singles ('Look At Me' / 'Into The Heart') but everything about the band was kept very secret.  Was that an attempt to create a “buzz” surrounding you and the music or because you were in the midst of as the Guardian put it being chased through the streets by record labels?

James: [Laughs] I think that was because we weren’t playing that many shows; we kind of felt less is more plus we didn’t talk to anyone after shows.  When we were doing the a&r bullshit that you have to do we didn’t talk to any a&r people which went down well with some and others took offence to it.

Ally: A lot of what we do tends to kind of polarize people; they either tend to warm to it or switch off. I don’t feel too much either way to be honest, I would rather it strikes an emotion in somebody where they feel god I can’t stand this it isn’t for me or the opposite, rather than standing in the middle 

Fear Of Drowning

MIRRORS | MySpace Music Videos

4TR: You eventually signed to Skint Records – what was it about them that enticed you to work with them?

James: Well we didn’t really like the whole finding a label experience to be honest it was the only time it didn’t feel very real to us but when we found Skint we found they were just real people

Ally: They shared the vision of what we wanted to do and there was no fluff surrounding it they weren’t trying to say the things they thought we wanted to here so we really respected that.  I think that’s one of the beauties of an indie label that it is honest and a smaller family. So we work very closely with fewer people who have something to do with everything really.

4TR: So you are moving on from the singles and are in the process of writing and recording a debut album, how is that going and do you have a release date in mind?

Ally: It will be out in the latter part of the year we think, but nothing is set in stone because there is no sort of rush to put anything out.  But we were saying the other day that we have probably come to the end of writing it so now it’s just the process of recording which is just as important to us.

James: Absolutely, and we write in a studio environment where we write the songs and record them piece by piece, so in terms of re-recording some of the demos we have done that is as much about writing as sitting around a piano with a chord progression.

Ally: Especially on the basis that we consider sounds so important, so it can be quite a long process.

4TR: You are playing tonight as part of the HMV - Next Big Thing - their attempt at showcasing the new music scene in the UK - but ultimately are still under the radar in terms of the industry, which some might see as a blessing in disguise.  What do you think about that?

Ally: Its all sort of a media thing really; whether we got labeled the next big thing of 2010 or not its not going to change anything about our lives as Mirrors and is not going to change the way we write and record.  So I think it’s really what you make of it

James: For us it’s more about the live following; we just finished a tour with Delphic which went incredibly well and we really enjoyed it.  People responded and got into it in a great way, plus we were playing with Delphic who I guess people originally kind of bunched us together with, but our sound is a lot warmer and I think people realized that through the shows.

Ally: Yeah of course there are similarities between us but there are also major differences which is the same with any band isn’t it.  We thoroughly enjoyed playing the tour with them and it was well received which is the important thing, plus it has given us a lot of confidence.

James: I guess because of what we do we expected to polarize people more than we actually did because its quite a cerebral experience with the visuals and everything and although its dance its not fall to the floor hands in the air dance

4TR: Would you say it’s a bit more considered in that sense?

Ally: Yeah exactly, we like to think so anyway. 

4TR: Through the live show you have put a lot of thought into the set up and how you want to be perceived as live performing artists, so what is it you want people to get from a Mirrors show?

Ally: Good question, I don’t think we have a set list of what we want people to get out of it; I mean if people want to get something out of it then obviously that’s excellent.  We try and offer people an audio visual interactive feast if you will, so if they want to come to take that away then come on in!  

James: if we made a dent in what peoples perceptions of pop music can be that would be our goal, I know that’s quite an egotistical thing to say but its an important point.

Ally: you don’t have to be a manufactured girl band or 4 lads in skinny jeans playing guitars; pop can be all manner of things, if you look at the sort of era we get compared to a lot the bands of that time that were pop music, like the music was so much more credible and heartfelt and real and we just wanted to bring that back really.

4TR: Really pop is still deemed to be a dirty word within many minds, probably because people ordinarily associate pop with the Britney’s and Mileys of this world, and not the left-field pop that is everywhere currently.

James: I think the art of a good pop song is the most difficult within music to achieve; like to make something that is credible and accessible is really hard, I mean anyone can make a noise, we were never interested in doing something a little bit grotty we wanted to make something big and expansive and cinematic.

Ally: Yeah it was a slow moving beast to get to the sound we are at now but everything we are doing is constantly evolving to take Mirrors and grow it as a whole entity.  I think we are doing that quite successfully now so we are looking forward to what this year might hold for us.

Words: Francesca Strange

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Reply #1 on : Mon April 12, 2010, 17:33:38

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