Earthset has released their new video for the track titled ‘The Mirror’, from their upcoming album ‘Bound’, dropping on March 8th. I will say this over and over and over again; Earthset are a band that surprises me ever time they release something. They are so far outside of the box that box isn’t even visible from where they are. And that is such a good thing I wish more artists would do. ‘The Mirror’ sounds NOTHING like what has come before it from ‘Bound’. And yet it has every single quality. It’s a signature within a signature that is the sound of Earthset.
A perfect companion to the song is the visual aspect that is the video. If the video were an actual mirror of the song it would be that unique carnival mirror trapped in the Twilight Zone showing you the truer aspects of your soul. Whether or not you cringe or caress what you see is up to you, but know it is there and it is honest in all of it’s dark beauty. Earthset are like that. They let you confront what you love about music and show you where you could be if you caress what you love. And that is brilliance.
Bound will be released on March 8, 2022 via Dischi Bervisti/Costello’s.
Check out our other features with Earthset HERE.
About ‘The Mirror’
This is a song with an energetic mood, almost funky bassline and two verses which share the same vocal lines, but on two different music keys: the first one is on major chords, while the second one on minor chords. As we sing in the song, the two parts seem to be one the negative reflection of the other (“these days I don’t match with my own reflection”).
The lyrics are based on a short piece by J.L. Borges, about “the mirror people”.
In the novel, the mirror people once attacked the world of men, but they were defeated by a Wizard-king and forced to live in their realm of glass, as pale imitations of humans.
But, one day, they will be free from the spell, and will slowly become independent from us. In the end, they will wage war on our world again, and this time they won’t be stopped.
This novel made us think about the many “mirrors” we have to deal with in our lives: mirror is everything that reflects our image, and today there are not only glass surfaces doing that: social media, smartphones and everything that shows the “image” of a person can be classified as a mirror.
But today, especially on the internet, the images of ourselves are always more distant from the actual human beings we should be. The images of people on the internet are most of the time more aggressive and rude than the real person would be.
It is something happening not only to singles, but to the entire society.
We are becoming full of rage, spreading hate on others, trolling, bullying etc etc.
Like in the novel by J.L.Borges, our reflections are no longer following our movements, and they seem to be waging war against the world as we know it.
“In those days the world of mirrors and the world of men were not, as they are now, cut off from each other. They were, besides, quite different; neither beings nor colors nor shapes were the same. Both kingdoms, the specular and the human, lived in harmony; you could come and go through mirrors.
One night the mirror people invaded the earth. Their power was great, but at the end of bloody warfare the magic arts of the Yellow Emperor prevailed. He repulsed the invaders, imprisoned them in their mirrors, and forced on them the task of repeating, as though in a kind of dream, all the actions of men. He stripped them of their power and of their forms and reduced them to mere slavish reflections.
Nonetheless, a day will come when the magic spell will be shaken off. The first to awaken will be the Fish. Deep in the mirror we will perceive a very faint line and the color of this line will be like no other color. Later on, other shapes will begin to stir. Little by little they will differ from us; little by little they will not imitate us. They will break through the barriers of glass or metal and this time will not be defeated. Side by side with these mirror creatures, the creatures of water will join the battle. In Yunnan they do not speak of the Fish but of the Tiger of the Mirror. Others believe that in advance of the invasion we will hear from the depths of mirrors the clatter of weapons.”
(From The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges.)
About ‘Bound’
In Earthset’s vision, “bound” isn’t just an LP, but a full audio-visual-performative work of art. The album is made up of 11 tracks, each with its own video, each song and video connected to the previous and the next both visually and musically, creating a unitary 42-minute-long audio-visual narrative.
The concept that binds the whole project together, songs, images and videos, is a reflection on the value of relationships as the foundation of existence and is revealed in the title itself, “bound”.
Coherently, the album works best together in its entirety, as it was envisioned as a whole.
As a matter of fact, while each song perfectly stands as a valid single, it is in its relation with all the other elements that make up the audio-visual project that the experience is justified and reveals a completely different meaning. The focus is not on the single elements but in the relationships between them, as the relationships bear meaning and are justified in themselves.
“The act of making music has its value in the infinite series of interactions that lie within it and acquires further value in the potential interactions that may come from it. It is, after all, an attempt at communicating and connecting with a potential listener or viewer. Therefore the whole album was recorded live in a single take, without breaks or cuts and no edit; it is a key feature of the work and is in line with the mindset Earthset adopted for it. This is documented in a video of the full recording session, which is extra content.
Bound will be released in March 2022 via Dischi Bervisti/Costello’s.
About Earthset
Luigi Varanese, Costantino Mazzoccoli, Emanuele Orsini and Ezio Romano are Earthset, an alt-rock quartet from Bologna, Italy. Together since 2012, after their debut in 2015 with the concept album “In a State of Altered Unconsciousness” and the EP “POPISM” two years later, in 2018 they made the soundtrack of “L’Uomo Meccanico”a 1921 Italian-French silent film restored by the Cineteca di Bologna.
A tour was organised as a result of this experience, in collaboration with the Cineteca di Bologna, which led them to play the soundtrack around Italy and abroad.
Some of the highlights of this tour were the presentation of “L’Uomo Meccanico” at the Pesaro Film Festival; the show at Franco Maria Ricci’s Labirinto della Masone; the opening night of the Soundscreen Film Festival of Ravenna 2019, in which the band also had the opportunity to play together with the director Abel Ferrara; the shows in Brescia and Pisa, in collaboration with the local Universities; and, abroad, the closing evening of “Les Rencontres du Cinéma Italien” festival, which hosted soundtracks made by Italian groups such as Massimo Volume, Julie’s Haicut and Giardini di Mirò in previous editions.
Following the show’s success, the band released the soundtrack’s LP, recorded live and published by Dischi Bervisti and Koe Records.
The album was released on January 31, 2020 and was officially presented on the same day with a show in Rome, at the Salle du Cinéma of the Institut Francaise Center Saint Louis, in collaboration with the French Embassy. However, the subsequent tour, scheduled to support the release, was canceled due to the COVID-19 crisis.
Thanks to the experience with “L’Uomo Meccanico”, they produced a new cine-concert for Murnau’s “Nosferatu”, commissioned by the Ravenna Soundscreen Film Festival and presented exclusively at the 2020 edition of the Festival.
In February 2021, however, they recorded “Retour au Ciné” a film of the “L’Uomo Meccanico” cine-concert, shot live at the Teatro Comunale in Bologna and produced by Fonoprint studios, with the contribution of the Emilia-Romagna Region and the collaboration of ATER Foundation.
The film premiered at the Univerciné festival in Nantes and was then broadcast as part of VIRALISSIMA, the online event format of the Emilia-Romagna Region, which brought together the best of the regional production. In the second half of 2021, work on the new album “bound” was completed.
LINKS:
https://orcd.co/touristsandterrorists
https://www.facebook.com/Earthset
https://www.instagram.com/earthset_/
https://open.spotify.com/artist/27FihPbgJOaSdAyq9kgb9t
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCflPJZXoRcY5hGvGrXZbEeQ
https://earthset.bandcamp.com
https://open.spotify.com/album/5YYJf90FktsQTRRMZWNInT
https://www.deezer.com/it/album/270196352
