North Carolina based songwriter/producer Chorusing has shared atmospheric new track, Midday Sun, the second single from his forthcoming debut album, Half Mirror, which will be released on 13 August via Western Vinyl. And in the artist’s opinion the song is a moodily stripped back ode to Nirvana Unplugged, with “stripped-down drums and bass providing a bed for the vocals and noisy guitar,” McConnell says. “I wanted that slide guitar to seem like a mirage, like heat waves coming off hot asphalt, a kind of sonic metaphor for the lyrical themes.”
“‘Midday Sun’ is a song about waking up late after a long night—attempting to leave old habits behind and fantasizing about a simpler, more settled life” – Chorusing
New album ‘Half Mirror’ will feature warm analog synths alongside self-described “confessional folk.” Tracked at home in the mountains of North Carolina using a vintage tape delay, electric guitar, and a homemade synthesizer named ‘Balsam,’ the album is a lonesome push-pull of humanized electronics – folk music made alien by electronic adornments. And perhaps the best part is the fact that O’Connell crafted the personal and cathartic ‘Half Mirror’ over the course of a decade.
The album reflects upon O’Connell’s memories and formative experiences, which included an Indiana childhood spent obsessively practicing metal drumming and recording on 4-tracks with his brothers Joe and Greg; years playing in punk and hardcore bands, early songwriting and time studying mathematics in Hungary – a place where he continued writing and playing at the Kitchen Budapest—a collective of artists, theorists, and coders.
About the meaning of the album’s title, O’Connell says, “Almost all of the songs are retrospective, and Half Mirror is a metaphor for trying to reflect on experiences in an incomplete or unsatisfactory way.” Half Mirror evokes a profoundly moody sense of place: the fog heavy in the mountain peaks, the dew present on early morning walks, and the musky smell of rhododendrons in the air.
Half Mirror will be released released on 13 August via Western Vinyl and is available for pre-order HERE
