Album Review: The KVB – Mirror Being (2015 LP)

Mirror Being

With a handful of impressive LPs and EPs to their name, London duo The KVB have just released their first full length instrumental album Mirror Being on Invada Records. I remember that they first piqued my interest back in 2013 when they toured Australia with the Brian Jonestown Massacre and was so blown away by their performance I submerged myself in their back catalogue straight away.

The KVB’s sound is hard to pin down but they happily seem to shift between shoegaze, glam, indie and in the case of Mirror Being – drone and electronica. Despite Mirror Being’s electronic direction and lack of vocals they still manage to retain parts of their trademark shoegaze/drone sound whilst being able to push onwards into unchartered sonic territory.

Opening track “Atlas” wafts gently out of my speakers into my head and I’m thinking “This is nice and everything but when is it going to get dark”. A bit like the ominous start of Wendy Carlos’s score to A Clockwork Orange. A resounding drone announces the second track – “Tenuous Grasp” and you know The KVB have shown their hand. A minute later a tribal percussive barrage accompanies the droning and I feel like I’m in a sealed cube in the jungle – underwater. “Dys-Appearance” keeps up the momentum with more hypnotic droning before morphing into the frenetic “Obsession”, which contains a mesmerising vocal loop which I found reminiscent of post punk icons Cabaret Voltaire.

Both “Fields” and “Poetics of Space” allow the listener some breathing room before the precise and meticulous monotone beats of the terribly infectious “Chapter”. The KVB show a hint of glam on the title track “Mirror Being”, overlayed with fuzzy synthesizers and their trademark drone makes it a standout for me.

Mirror Being ends much like it begins with the restrained “Descent”, a fitting closing track for a very engaging album. Overall The KVB managed to convey a strong dystopian atmosphere on this record without it being overwhelming – much like a J.G. Ballard novel actually.

There is definitely a ghost in this machine.

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