くるり岸田氏が本作を絶賛。注目の一枚!
プロデューサーとしてAlabama Shakes『Sound Color』を手掛け、アーティストとしてもエリック・クラプトンに才能を絶賛される若きUS天才音楽家、Blake Millsの最新作。楽曲に派手さはなく、知的で内省的な作品。「Bon Iver」周辺のSSW好きに刺さる内容。
(C)町田店:清水 真広

タワーレコード （2020/06/19）

LA在住のギタリスト/コンポーザー/プロデューサー。2010年のアルバム・デビュー以来アラバマ・シェイクスやハイム等のプロデューサー業からバンド・オブ・ホーセズ、ノラ・ジョーンズのツアーでサポート・ギターを担当するなどし、数多くのミュージシャンから熱い支持を受け、幅広く活動しているブレイク・ミルズ。

アラバマ・シェイクス『Sound &Color』(2015)のプロデューサーとしては、アコースティック・ギターの奏でる生々しい響きも活かしたダイナミックな音作りでグラミー賞にノミネート。そのサウンドを彷彿とさせるような洗練されたサウンドが散りばめられ、再びPポップスに向き合って制作した4作目となるオリジナル・アルバムが完成。

ボブ・ディランの8年振りとなるオリジナル・アルバム『Rough and Rowdy Ways』にもフィオナ・アップルらと共に参加していることが発表され、ますます注目を集めるブレイク・ミルズの新作。

発売・販売元 提供資料 （2020/06/30）

Blake Mills has earned a well-deserved reputation as a fine session guitarist and Grammy-nominated producer. He has worked with some of the eras best-known artists including Alabama Shakes, Perfume Genius, and John Legend. He has also released three idiosyncratic solo albums as different from one another as they are from anything else. Mutable Set is his fourth, a completely realized project that looks back at his catalog even as it gazes toward the uncertain, restless future. Mutable Set combines the instrumental and production prowess of 2018s nearly ambient instrumental set Look and the poignant songwriting sensibilities of 2014s Heigh Ho, only more softly. Released during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, its songs are concerned with timely topics: The strange pace of modern life that races while seeming to stand still; individual and societal isolation, climate change, the exterior state of the world and its people, as well as Mills interior universe. Assisting Mills is a cast of longtime friends and collaborators including Rob Moose, Cass McCombs, Pino Palladino, Patrick Warren, Sam Gendel, and Gabriel Kahane. The album posits Mills as an artist who stands in the no mans land between the singer/songwriter and the sound designer. There are places, such as on opener Never Forever, where its nearly impossible to identify the instruments behind his softly expressive singing. In Eat My Dust, a fingerpicked, minor-key, nylon-string guitar, and electric piano and other keyboards, flood the foreground as Mills falsetto pours his lyrics like a waterfall. He weaves folk and jazz in a repetitive cadence that traces the dreamy articulations of Pentangle, even as it envelops the listener in a languid, hooky flow. May Later is a waltz that recalls the Gothic Yankee Americana of Van Dyke Parks if he were working with Elliott Smith as a vocalist. Vanishing Twin is introduced by Mooses digitally delayed cello atop a rumbling snare and rounded single-string guitar lines creating a loopy vamp. Mills delivery is clipped, pained, yet fully integrated: The walls are thin, I hear a pin drop/Somewhere my kin sits on a hilltop/Don’t cry my star, I won’t be far… as layered guitars, percussion, strings, and keys carry his voice, allowing him deeper entry into the lyric. The mix gradually fills with overdubbed strings, layered drums, mangled electric guitar notes, feedback, and distortion. Its followed by My Dear One with brushed tom-toms sounding like a heartbeat. The halting lyric emerges as a plea to be embraced amid a heartbroken and alienated world. Window Facing a Window melds flamenco, gypsy jazz, and folk in a sublime, almost otherworldly presentation of carefully chosen sounds and textures. Mills leaves his ego off Mutable Set and serves the songs with care, attention, and tenderness. And while this record sounds bleak on the surface, theres a strange sense of comfort in these songs; they acknowledge the sad state of the world even while attempting to transcend its darkness and uncertainty. ~ Thom Jurek

Rovi