MIRT
Artificial Field Recordings
CAT8
Cat Sun 2012
07 Tracks. 48mins31secs

A musician, he is member of experimental pop out Brasil And The Gallowbrothers Band, graphic designer and magazine editor, Tomasz ‘Tomek’ Mirt also heads Polish imprint Cat Sun and helps run parent label Monotype Records. With his solo project, soberly named Mirt, he has been experimenting with acoustic and electric instrumentation and electronic processing for over a decade, releasing his debut album, Rain In City Of Myrrh And Forget-Me-Not back in 2001, and he has since published a further four records, two for Cat Sun and two for Monotype.

Field recordings have always been an integral part of Mirt’s solo work, and this album, his sixth, is no exception, but his approach is slightly different here as he relies on electronics to create similar textures to those he would ordinarily collect in his surroundings and process into his music. Working from analog synths upon which he appends guitars, trumpets and a handful of other acoustic instruments, Mirt develops here a particularly minimal atmospheric soundtrack, over the course of seven untitled tracks, and appears, for the most part, to simply rearrange the sound sources he has at his disposal into infinite combinations from one track to the next. For instance, part of the guitar motifs which can be heard in the background on the first piece are echoed later on the fourth track, this time pushed into the foreground., whilst fragments of melody played on a trumpet also form part of the intricate sonic fabric of both tracks. Equally, the fifth and sixth pieces share some components and work almost as two different sides of a same composition. Although their set up is rather different, the former being a somewhat more substantially fleshed out sonic construction than the latter, the two make use of similar guitar textures and motifs. The latter also takes some textural elements of track two, where Mirt applies his artificial field recordings in tiny precise touches, giving them predominance over a couple of dull recurring chords in the background.

Although some of Mirt’s soundscapes are fairly easy to recognise, others remain much more enigmatic. Heavily processed acoustic instruments, electronics or real field recordings, it is for the most part difficult to tell exactly what these tracks are made of, but it help preserving the dreamy atmosphere of the record, even when Mirt pushes a tad too far into introspection, as is at times the case on the second piece. The last track also sees Mirt venturing into extremely bare and desolate territory. Built from just a handful of sounds and loops which never develop into anything really substantial, this is ambient music at its most ascetic.

The premise of this album is quite an interesting one, and its delivery for the most part matches expectation, even if things slips into slightly too esoteric mode on a couple of occasions. This said, Tomasz Mirt’s sonic constructions are extremely refined and intricate, and Artificial Field Recordings remains a pretty exquisite journey from start to end.

3.8/5

Mirt | Cat Sun

[cat|sun, 2011] mirt – untitled 4 from 49manekinów on Vimeo.