Restless Mosaic - Quality Mirrors
West Coast artist Restless Mosaic presents his third album 'Quality Mirrors', and 11-track offering that is saturated with surprise, following up his 2022 album 'Made By Thawing Ice'. The haunting and hypnotic focus track 'Circling the Canopies' was inspired by electronic music legends Delerium. The album's lead track 'Lost Within This Time' features Anji Bee of iconic dreampop duo Lovespirals.
Restless Mosaic is the project of Brandon Isleib, an electronic songmaker based in Everett, WA, named for the idea of a mosaic's intricacy and structure, and how the parts and the whole relate in a way that they only make sense when they come together. Combining sounds and genres, usually considered disparate, he connects them into something greater than any one of them.
"The album title compares my low self-identity to being farsighted: I need others to hold up mirrors at a distance so that, in the reflections, I see what I am. My initial emotional literacy was taught not by people I knew but by artists like Peter Gabriel, Natalie Merchant, Tasmin Archer, and Kirsty Hawkshaw, and I clutch their work talismanically," says Brandon Isleib.
"This third Restless Mosaic album is a check-in on my emotional literacy, with mirrors held up by my amazing collaborators to see a fuller picture. It has more lyrics than I’d written in the past decade, and even though I’m using a lot of the same vocabulary, it’s coming from a much realer person. Topics like how power differentials between parents and children change with age ('7000 Sparks'), or my fears that therapists are teaching me how to be the best them instead of the best me ('The Emotion Right in Front of Me'), aren’t undone by intellectualization like they might have been when I was younger."
Restless Mosaic takes a principled approach to arrangement and textures, his lyrics are as vivid as they are polysyllabic. The music on this album is grounded - sonic adventures exploring a sense of restlessness. A setting in which listeners can expect the unexpected, this music is a boon for your neuroplasticity. With his music having been streamed over 3 million times via YouTube over the years, Restless Mosaic ow moves into the foreground with his own voice and a variety of collaborators.
This album showcases the artists' diversity, from a Eurodance track that soundtrack your shopping experience to the shoegaze influences next to P-Funk-tinged chaos presided over by rapper Declaime of Aloe Blacc, Madlib, and Flying Lotus (he is also executive producer of Georgia Anne Muldrow's Grammy-nominated 'Overload'). New York singer-songwriter Rose Alaimo contributes vocals on a track and even mastering engineer Vincent Villuis (best known for his ambient work as Aes Dana, his psychill label Ultimae Records and work with Stevie Nicks and Sheryl Crow) is also in on the fun.
Brandon Isleib adds, "With this album, my soul finally got to speak without coughing on the dust of my past. It still speaks idiosyncratically, but now it’s intelligible. Maybe because of that dusting off, the album might sound darker than my conscious headspace when making it. I have no idea if you’ll hear track three, 'Melt Spun', as happy or sad. But how often are we exclusively one or the other, anyway? Our inner light refracts in the prism of daily life. Sometimes we’re red by day and blue by night, trying to keep it all together. What colors do your mirrors reflect back to you?"
As of March 7, the 'Quality Mirrors' album is available everywhere, including Apple Music, Spotify and Bandcamp. Later this year, Restless Mosaic aims to release a new album that brings Declaime's poetry to Isleib's back catalog of instrumentals.
