Bleep

There is exciting stuff in store for fans of His Name Is Alive - the Disciples imprint have announced a run of three albums consisting of the project’s unreleased early works. The first of these to emerge is All The Mirrors In The House, a set which focuses on the time when His Name Is Alive was the home taping project of Warren Defever.

All The Mirrors In The House takes in the period of 1979-1986, a timespan which means that some of the entries here were made when Defever was as young as 10. The tender age at which Defever created these pieces gives them an air of childlike curiosity. On this record we see a young person’s musical understanding developing in real time.

Defever’s youth also makes the quality of these tracks all the more remarkable. All The Mirrors In The House is not just a cute example of a kid playing around with recording equipment - these droning ambiences are dense, complex and frequently very beautiful. Artists like James Leyland Kirby and William Basinski would surely consider tracks as shimmeringly gorgeous as ‘Because Piano’ as gems in their arsenal and there is an ethereal quality to many of the numbers here that is not dissimilar to the ‘holy minimalism’ of Arvo Pärt.

With All The Mirrors In The House, Disciples haven given us an LP that both sheds light on His Name Is Alive’s later work and is also able to stand up next to anything else in Defever’s discography.