MIRS

Continuing on from the chillwave-ish, easy listening theme I had yesterday with Work Drugs, I would like to present to you Amir Motlagh, born and raised in Los Angeles, who goes by the name of MIRS.  On November 2nd, 2010, MIRS released his debut EP entitled Spin Cycle on Bandcamp, and was kind enough to send me over a few links to have a listen to.  I was immediately drawn into not only the sound of the EP, but also the concept behind it.  Spin Cycle consists of four songs, each one named after a season, following a fictional character "through the changing seasons, cycling through a trans-figurative metamorphosis".  On top of this, what's also cool is that the recordings "coincided in real time with the changing of the seasons", the song "Spring (Bombs)" being written during spring, "Summer (Farahavar)" in summer, etc.  I love that kind of shit.  In an odd way, I feel like creative projects such as this open a window into the mind of the composer.  Not only do you follow a story through your listening, but in a way you get an exclusive perspective of a certain event or time period through the eyes of someone else.  If I'm listening to "Fall (Birds)", I'm getting a sense of what MIRS was experiencing at that time, which is pretty neat.

Although this is MIRS's first solo endeavor, he certainly isn't new to music.  He is a an American Independent Film Maker and multi-media artist who has scored multiple movie soundtracks.  Furthermore, he has fronted two albums with his previous band called Shanks and the Dreamers, which has released some pretty fantastic material as well, spanning from genres like "electro hip-hop", to "post-rock", to "instrumental ambient" music.  MIRS carries a lot of this experimental drive onto his Spin Cycle EP, but at the same time seems to be trying to create a more concise tone for himself.  While "Spring (Bombs)" channels a more chillwave atmosphere, "Winter (Little Tokyo)" tries something new with heavily distorted guitars, focuses more on instrumentation, and drowns out the vocals slightly.  Yet, they both sound like they belong to be on the same release.  What I also like about the EP is the thought out layering of guitars, which MIRS really seems to like playing around with.  I feel like this is exemplified in "Fall (Birds)", where I fell in love with the background acoustic riff, which surreptitiously aids in driving the track forward.  Below I've posted what I think may be my favorite two songs off Spin Cycle, "Fall (Birds)" and "Spring (Bombs)".  Hope ya'll dig it!

 Fall (birds)

 Spring (bombs)

You can check out these and the rest of Spin Cycle at his SoundCloud here.  To download, check out his Bandcamp page here, and for more information in general, MIRS has a new homepage located here.