Photo by Tasha Tziakis.
Te Whanganui-A-Tara/Wellington-based psych-kosmische pop group Mirror Ritual (formerly known as Transistor) have just dropped their latest offering - 'Fear In All', paired with a competitive, table tennis-fuelled music video directed by Hunter Blair and made with the support of NZ On Air.
According to band-member Lochie Noble, the song has been a long time in the making (sometimes, good things take time, alright?). Originally crafted in 2018, the song had multiple revisions before eventually taking shape into the rolling dream-hypnotic piece it is today.
"Back when we first started working on the song, I was still relying heavily on reverb, delay, and phased guitar to carry the songwriting. The song was hiding behind all of this for a good while, so I decided to peel it back and lean more into its ‘chamber-pop’ qualities. We added layers of mellotron flutes, strings, autoharps and nylon guitar that really brought it to life. There’s a good amount of weird sampling and more off-kilter recording tricks going on too, which is a nice contrast to the more composed instrumentation." - Lochie Noble.
The music video features band members Lochie Noble, Eli Polaczuk, Mia Kelly and Riley Dick participating in a dramatic match of table tennis, putting their egos to the test and practicing their form in breathtaking locations. Despite Lochie winning the trophy first (spoiler alert), he confesses that he had "hours upon hours of practicing [his] bat-to-ball coordination the night before shooting" and "it took many, many tries to get even one usable take out of [him], all of which is a testament to Hunter’s patience as a director".
Watch the video below.
You can find and support Mirror Ritual on Bandcamp here.
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