M I I R R O R S
What began as a chance encounter on an airplane between Brian McSweeney and Shawn Rios 22 years ago grew into a decades long friendship which ignited the inevitable musical partnership that formed Chicago’s MIIRRORS. They reverse-engineered the usual process of becoming a band by prioritizing album creation over live performance while at their own pace, morphing the duo into a cohesive quintet of seasoned multi-instrumentalists along the way- veterans Dmitri Rakhuba, Andre Miller, and Patrick Riley completed the lineup and they evolved the collective sound quickly, momentarily trading the stage for the tracking room.
While recording, the group began self-releasing singles just three months before the pandemic took its toll on the music community, but not before the public took notice with their imagined “completed” version of Jeff Buckley’s rare 1997 four-track demo “Gunshot Glitter,” with Steven Edelstone of Paste Magazine professing, “No one has ever been able to recapture Buckley’s lightning-in-a-bottle essence since he passed in 1997. MIIRRORS come the closest of anyone.” As artists suddenly found themselves on a forced indefinite hiatus, MIIRRORS saw opportunities for further creation despite the industry stalemate: documenting a live set at Narwhal Studios in the upcoming self-directed Definitive Version, filming their video for “Nightwalk” in a barren, beautiful late evening Chicago landscape during the height of the shutdown, featuring their single “Sinistry” as the lead-off track on the acclaimed Situation Chicago! 2 CIVL benefit vinyl compilation, and writing material beyond their first album while simultaneously working on their eventual live performance.
Stagnancy has not been an option, yet the band has maintained a low profile. Fast forward to a post-pandemic scene starving for live music, the group finally set sail with a series of packed hometown headline performances, immediately establishing a word of mouth reputation as a band to see.
Recorded in Studio B at Electrical Audio along with sessions in Los Angeles and Nashville, their debut LP Motion And Picture (Pravda Records) is a cinematic soundscape of honest lyrical introspection and reactive abrasion, a personal timespan of disillusionment, resolve and return of hope. Waves of cascading textures blur the sonic lines between synthesizers and guitars a la My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive as Rios’s atypical rhythms anchor the songs while McSweeney’s voice ascends beyond Miller’s/ Riley’s/ Rakhuba’s expanding colors.
LP1: MOTION AND PICTURE
Recorded at Electrical Audio, Studio B
Mixed by Brian Deck, Narwhal Studios
LP2 DEMOS
Live performance / writing sessions
“Now their debut full-length is finally here, and if you’re wondering whether it’s worth the wait—let me reassure you: it would’ve been worth an even longer one.”
-Newcity
“You can never predict the whims of a fickle public, but as MIIRRORS work on their first full-length album, they certainly seem to have all the elements in place to be the next big thing.”
-The Chicago Reader
“Covering Buckley is a near herculean task—Buckley had one of the biggest vocal ranges in music history after all—and MIIRRORS pass with flying colors.”
-Paste Magazine
“Genre-bending compositions of epic proportions— MIIRRORS remains a bit of a mystery, but the band’s anonymity aside, listening to their stories and lyrics feels like catching up with an old friend.”
-Basement Magazine
