The album is quite mellow and the instrumentals never complex or labyrinthine, but if you’re looking for an album which will carry you from world to world in pointillist touches, this is a record and a producer which you would do well to check out.
Firmly planted in the camp of chill or chillwave
Being an electronic musician often means keeping up with music technology—and this perpetual updating into modernity regularly finds an outlet in the artistic themes and ideas explored by producers. Abstract shapes on album covers and blurbs referencing futuristic vistas or science-fiction diagrams, music videos where experimental 3D modeling accompanies twisted glitchy beats—electronic musicians participate in a culture which contemplates futurity with glee.
Not so much with Girl in the Mirror. The Hungarian producer behind Underwater Tales offers on her debut released earlier this year a series of tracks and beats which, while firmly planted in the camp of chill or chillwave, doesn’t yield to the usual clichés of the genre and instead paint pictures half-playful and tranquil, half-melancholic. Piano melodies feature prominently throughout the record alongside other hammered instruments, and sometimes vocal lines, with or without lyrics. The choice of instruments and arrangements sometimes bring to mind the rhythm and texture of rain, like in “Evil Fairies are Knocking on my Umbrella,” the shortest cut here, and yet one of the most evocative, with its funky chiptune-like synth melody. The mood of “Underwater Tales” definitely carries influences from anime and video games, painting the picture of another world, distant yet lived-in. The vocal tracks like “Blue-Eyed Bird” solidify this delicate humanity, but also help give the album a quiet sense of gravitas.
The album is quite mellow and the instrumentals never complex or labyrinthine, but if you’re looking for an album which will carry you from world to world in pointillist touches, this is a record and a producer which you would do well to check out.
Underwater Tales is available on Bandcamp.
