Nick Storring – Mirante

Nick Storring is a multi-instrumentalist composer based in Toronto. This album, his ninth, offers some very fine and delicate textures, airy percussion, hertzian quiverings and other subtle surges of very varied instrumental colours. Mirante is a tribute to Brazil (a country frequently visited by Storring) in which we recognize a few evanescent spectres of samba or choro, but which refuse to be concretely embodied, giving the whole an impression of floating and gently psychedelic weightlessness. Storring works by superimposing tapes recorded by himself on various instruments. The panoply of musical tools used by the composer-performer is plethoric: Fender Rhodes, Hohner Pianet-T, Hohner Clavinet D6, Yamaha CP60M Stage Piano, electric mandocello, acoustic and electric cello, bass, cavaquinho, glockenspiel, toy piano, toy balafon, melodicas, ocarina, clarinet, bamboo saxophone, dog whistle, cuíca, and I’m not even halfway through the list!

The end result is undeniably contemporary, but by no means experimental in the sense of ‘difficult to listen to’. On the contrary.  It’s an album of great sonic poetry, mesmerising like an impressionist kaleidoscope shot through with soothing light. Magnificent.