Buck Meek - Haunted Mountain - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

A gleaner of the forgotten, Buck Meek tips over the familiar and turns the unknown into a companion. On The Mirror, the artist's fourth solo record and second released by 4AD, there's a tender power, countered by immutable vulnerability. With an uncanny curiosity, Meek conjures twin worlds to reveal the uniqueness in the mundane. Inviting in reflection as collaborator and demon as friend, The Mirror doesn't seek to know but to ask, looking to the shape of a question rather than the illusion of it's answer.Meek grew up in Wimberley, Texas, teenage protege to an old guard of mystic Texas songwriters and musicians. He later moved to New York where he met Adrianne Lenker. The two lived in a van while singing their songs across the country before forming Big Thief. The partnership of Meek and producer, James Krivchenia, emerged from a decade of work together in Big Thief. Conceptually, The Mirror emerged from the idea to combine Meek's band's live, kinetic energy with an oblique electronic world. The pair invited a collective atmosphere in which simultaneous experiment could occur-musicians responding to each other in real time, while their instruments triggered modular synthesizers and electronic magic boxes. The Mirror welcomed in friends, family, collaborators from ranging musical eras of life as vital co-creators. New creative partners and longtime friends like composer and ambient musician Alex Somers joined in on synthesizer, toy microphone, and piano, and Mary Lattimore brought in the sounds of her prismatic harp.Lexical mirrors are handheld, tactile, and kept close throughout the record-each one holding up a new truth. The Mirror embraces the unknown with an abiding curiosity and Meek continues to reveal his skill as translator of human feeling and it's endless portals. The Mirror looks for duality, finding it in the weeds and overgrowth.

The album pulls together strands of progressive rock, folk, jazz, and harder-edged influences, shaping a set of songs built on contrast and detail. At times intricate and rhythmically shifting, elsewhere direct and melodic, the record moves between extended instrumental sections and vocal-led passages without losing sight of the core songwriting. THE TIRITH's origins reach back to the 1970s, when founding members Tim Cox and Dick Cory first played together as schoolmates in the band Minas Tirith. After more than thirty years apart, they reconnected, bringing with them a large archive of material-some finished, some still evolving, much of it written across the intervening decades. Both had remained active in music. Tim Cox went on to build a career as a songwriter and producer, including co-writing and producing Rozalla's international dance hit Everybody's Free (To Feel Good). Dick Cory continued writing throughout, producing a steady stream of material that would later feed directly into THE TIRITH's catalogue. Since reforming, the band have released three albums Tales from the Tower (2015), A Leap into the Dark (2019), and Return of the Lydia (2022). Across those records, their approach has remained focused on extended forms, narrative structure, and detailed arrangements, with each adding another layer to their sound. The current line-up includes drummer Paul Williams and keyboardist Anthony Hill alongside Cox and Cory. In recent years, the band have become a regular presence on the UK progressive circuit, appearing at events such as Cambridge Rock Festival and HRH Prog, and sharing stages with acts including Focus, Karnataka, and Gnidrolog.

Deluxe 2 CD version includes a bonus disc with 7 extra tracks.