Toronto composer Nick Storring has long made instrumental music with a strong sense of place. On his new LP, Mirante, Storring turns his ear toward Brazil—a country he has explored while visiting his partner’s family and friends—and produces some of the liveliest music of his career. The seven pieces collected on the album move between field recordings, plaintive synthesizer, and vibrant eruptions of sound; each piece is internally dynamic, holding multiple flows of chatty rhythm that always ebb back to an ambient foreground. The sound of Brazilian percussion—including cuíca, reco-reco, and pandeiro, all played by Storring—distinguishes Mirante from his past work. But it is the movement between these bright braids of instrumentation and the slower, more meditative phases of his compositions that define this record’s character. Mirante means “lookout” in Portuguese—a fitting title for a record that is deeply rooted in the materials and rhythm of Brazilian music while remaining self-consciously distant from any one particular tradition or sound. The effect of Storring’s suite is like that of surveying a landscape from the misty heights above. Mirante is a dizzying, inspiring journey for the senses put into relief by the inevitable return to one’s immediate ground.
Brennan McCracken is a writer from K’jipuktuk (Halifax) living in Tiohtià:ke (Montreal). He is currently completing PhD studies at the Department of English at Concordia University.