Colin Fisher: Reflections of the Invisible World
Halocline Trance
Canadian multi-instrumentalist Colin Fisher's performed with a staggering number of artists over the years, with names such as Jaime Branch, Caribou, Joe McPhee, William Parker, Laraaji, Fred Frith, Rhys Chatham, and Anthony Braxton among those dotting his bio. He's also played in duos, trios, and quartets, with the stylistic focus ranging from experimental improv to incendiary jazz. The list of outfits with which he's been associated is voluminous. Fisher, put simply, gets around.
His fifth solo album, Reflections of the Invisible World, is exactly that: a solo affair composed and performed by him alone, with producer Jeremy Greenspan (Junior Boys) aboard to shepherd the seven-track album into being and Fisher credited with guitar, saxophone, and electronics. Arve Henriksen, Terje Rypdal, Fennesz, and Archie Shepp are referenced by way of RIYL, but such name-checking ends up being less germane for the simple reason that Refections of the Invisible World sounds like no one else but its creator. Yes, it shares certain properties with specific traditions and genres, among them ambient, New Age, and jazz, but it resists pigeon-holing. Issued on striking lavender vinyl, the album's presented in classic album fashion, with tracks split across two sides.
There's a luxuriant, quasi-psychedelic quality to the material, buoyed as it is by a multi-layered display. Many a setting is a calming vista within which melodic figures subtly blossom. Being a solo recording, it's intimate by nature, as if Fisher's inviting the listener into his private domain. While electronic treatments are part of the mix, they're used in painterly fashion to enhance the production more than direct attention to themselves.
Among other things, Refections of the Invisible World is a feast for guitar lovers' ears. In representative settings such as “Monadic Mirror” and “Coalescence,” Fisher uses the instrument to generate a rippling mass that billows like some heady fusion of Steve Hillage, Andy Summers, and Adrian Belew. Meanwhile, a relaxed blues-folk feel builds on the entwining guitar atmospheres with which "Salient Charm” establishes itself. With Fisher's picking smudged by effects, the move effectively distances the piece from anything firmly rooted in country-folk traditions.
A peaceful, gently radiant oasis is evoked during “Zero Experience” via shimmering guitar textures, burbling electronics, and a generally spacious, meditative design—ambient sound painting at its finest and one of the rare times on the album where a connection between Fisher and Fennesz could be made. Darker moods emerge in “Double Image” and “Sanctum” when sax and electric guitar, the presence of electronic accents notwithstanding, engage in simulated live duets of left-field jazz. The presence of the horn nudges the music towards an improv jazz zone, which the release otherwise largely avoids in its focus on ambient-electronic guitar soundscapes. Regardless of that tonal contrast, the album captivates for the allure of its textural sound design.March 2021