| The marriage, or partnering, of performance and sound begins with the wails and squished faces of babes—improvised acts, attempts to draw response and be provided for. Mirror Mirror aim to indoctrinate us and our offspring. As the marketing and inspirational face of The Society for the Advancement of Inflammatory Consciousness, they beckon us to come watch them pray, do as they do. Kneeling at the altar, we are baptized with milk and honey. Here we are passed from teat to teat, lips lined with cream, napping side by side on mats, amplifiers pressed to our ears. Each dream, a song: the chants of the converted. All are led to new horizons, a brave new world. | 
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By Adley Atkin
The marriage, or partnering, of performance and sound begins with the wails and squished faces of babes—improvised acts, attempts to draw response and be provided for. Mirror Mirror aim to indoctrinate us and our offspring. As the marketing and inspirational face of The Society for the Advancement of Inflammatory Consciousness, they beckon us to come watch them pray, do as they do. Kneeling at the altar, we are baptized with milk and honey. Here we are passed from teat to teat, lips lined with cream, napping side by side on mats, amplifiers pressed to our ears. Each dream, a song: the chants of the converted. All are led to new horizons, a brave new world.
Brooklyn-based Mirror Mirror formed as a duo in late 2003 with vocalist David Riley and bassist Ryan Lucero working with a drum machine and a sequencer. They quickly found that galleries and art spaces permitted them a certain level of spatial exploration unavailable in the more controlled context of music-specific venues. Given time and preparation they could draft their worlds from scratch, drawing site-specific sculptures as their playgrounds.
To call Mirror Mirror— which now includes guitarist Jill Arcade, guitarist/pianist Kelly Fisher, and drummer Matt Bagdanoff—a band would be reductive. Every performance is a new experience incorporating visual art, music, video, theatre, sculpture, design, even food. Mirror Mirror are only content to surround you, overwhelm your senses, interact. At a recent Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery show, the space was decorated in lush fabrics and patterns, each attendee was led by a “host” to a floor mat and separated from friends. Let the instruction begin: videos of smiling faces faded in and out, superimposed over an urban landscape; one million happy members and counting. The text encouraged, “You are ahead of your time, join us, we’ve been waiting for you.”
Though the audience has a role in shaping performances, control plays a crucial part, a delicate place between Achilles’ heel and aesthetic tool. This is where the edges of the scene show. The white gallery wall, the sky-painted ceiling, the actor visible in the wing all lend themselves perfectly to a critique of the very utopia that they built. What better way to induce fear and paranoia than with ignorant mobs, infused with the passionate fervor of faith?
MM Presents The Society for the Advancement of Inflammatory Consciousness, Mirror Mirror’s upcoming release, is a schizophrenic exploration into the “multiple personalities and points of views of the society, as well as aspiring followers, runaways, communists, hustlers, party goers, and music producers.” Sonically it’s a little less weighty—a pastiche of British music from the sprawling, thematic pop of the Kinks’ The Village Green Preservation Society to Genesis’ soft-prog of Selling England by the Pound, with a brief nod Iron Maiden’s The Number of the Beast, to David Bowie invoked by David Riley’s swooning baritone and playful genre hopping. The compositions are lush and complex, blending folky sing-alongs, sinister rock songs, robotic choral pieces, and interludes. Capitalizing on the tension between devotion and terror, Mirror Mirror use perspectival flux to narrate the rise and fall of a utopia.
Welcome to the Society for the Advancement of Inflammatory Consciousness, and God Bless America. This is the daily tension of the city, full of promise and potential, amongst the shit and sludge. The shadow of towering monoliths can cradle, but they inevitably cast a shadow. In a way, Mirror Mirror are simply emulating the world of contradictions that surrounds them. Their recordings are just one element of their epic work, and oftentimes they are outweighed by the very concepts on which they rely. Mirror Mirror, for better or worse, approach their work with a bird’s eye view: they manufacture designer lifestyles, complete with blemishes. Lives so close that you can actually smell, taste, and touch them. Come—and stay for a while.
