A twelve-faceted sonic inquiry into celestial cycles and the illuminating nature of darkness, Bellowing Sun is the majestic culmination of composer, harmoniumist, and synthesist Jaime Fennelly’s immersive explorations of the natural world’s sensory dimensions. Commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago for its world premiere performance, and recorded and mixed by Fennelly with John McEntire (Tortoise), it features Janet Beveridge Bean(Freakwater), Jim Becker (Iron and Wine), and Jon Mueller (Death Blues).
Praise for bellowing sun
8.0. This is ecstatic hillbilly krautrock raga drone—with celestial vocals and a drummer who loves to rattle the room—built to be played in a modern art museum beneath a spinning phosphorescent orb. Despite all that, or maybe because of it, this is one of the decade’s true experimental wonders. – Grayson Currin, Pitchfork
8/10. An extended kosmische treat… rhapsodic. Two generations of experimental Chicago converge in this album of shimmering long-form grooves. – John Robinson, Uncut
On Bellowing Sun, Mind Over Mirrors creates a widescreen aura. Fennelly’s synths are met by Bean’s rising vocals and Mueller’s rattling drums. In composing Bellowing Sun, Fennelly focused on rhythm more than ever… that tactic pays continual dividends, injecting blood into his oxygen-rich music. – Marc Masters, NPR Music
“Bellowing Sun manages to touch on fascinating iterations of drone music, presenting a wildly diverse landscape of tracks that are both individualistic and work in lock-step to present a cohesive whole. This, perhaps, is the crowning triumph of Bellowing Sun: Its ability to spring naturally from a source, presented as music that’s existed forever, previously untapped before Fennelly awoke it from a slumber. It feels both massive and intimate, a hulking presence yet easily digestible… Bellowing Sun is merely a part of a larger vision. But the music—this current iteration of Mind Over Mirrors’ constantly evolving vision—is so powerful, so alive, that it carries a meaning all its own.” – Will Schube, Noisey
An awe-inspiring opus of limitless revelry. The key ingredient that allows the novel to transcend, and for Mind Over Mirrors’ electroacoustic miasmas to aurally replicate, is the description of the natural world in a metaphysical vein. [The 12 tracks] oscillate and breathe, melding in with the synapses of the listener and lulling them into a rapturous state. – The Quietus
I’m still grappling with the album’s ambitious sprawl, which weaves together various threads Fennelly has followed over the years—new age, Indian classical music, drone, Krautrock, minimalism—into a spectacular, cohesive whole that envelops the listener in color and rhythm. Exquisitely crafted, meditative music. – Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader
An atmospheric groove that somehow sounds both intergalactic and medieval. – Stereogum