SYD ARTHUR

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Free and edgy, operatic and immediate, Sound Mirror sees Syd Arthur lighting out for the territory, reconfiguring contemporary psychedelia with a harmonic interplay of deeply felt songcraft, collectivist performance, and limitless invention. Their second full-length outing, the album sees traditional borderlines obliterated as elements of free jazz improvisation, floor-filling funk, and bucolic folk fuse with the band’s most concentrated and emotionally direct songwriting thus far. From the tantalizing “Garden of Time” to the prophetic “Sinkhole,” Sound Mirror expands and refines Syd Arthur’s already uncommon sonic multiverse into a brave new space where focus and concision is as essential as freewheeling abstraction and genre-shattering creativity.

“The weirder stuff comes as naturally as the more traditional,” says singer/guitarist Liam Magill. “It’s all the same to us, really. Somehow everything filters through and comes out as us four guys and the sound that we make.”

Syd Arthur – Magill, his brother Joel (bass, vocals), Raven Bush (violin, keyboards, mandolin), and Fred Rother (drums) – emerged out of Kent early in the new century, their post-millennial revision of classic British psychedelic music leading MOJO to proclaim them “Canterbury’s dazzling new sons.” On An On, the band’s 2012 debut album (released in 2013 by Harvest), affirmed their insatiable appetite for invention, bridging ambitious time-shifting workouts with indelible folk-pop dazzlers like the breakthrough single, “Ode To The Summer.”