Mamiffer, “All That Is Beautiful” (Sige)
Over on Vashon, wyrd-folk duo Mamiffer—keyboardist/vocalist Faith Coloccia and avant-metal guitarist Aaron Turner—are establishing an excellent, low-profile cultural empire with their Sige label and various musical projects. The latest fruit from that bountiful tree is the Mamiffer full-length, The Brilliant Tabernacle (out November 1 and produced by Randall Dunn). The first song from the LP, the diaphanous pagan hymn “River of Light” (featuring TERMINATor‘s Veronica Dye on flute and Zen Mother’s Monika Khot on backing vocals), may be their most gorgeous work to date.
The album’s second single, “All That Is Beautiful,” comes with a mesmerizing video by Seattle photographer and musician Lauren Rodriguez (she also plays in TERMINATor), and it further indicates that The Brilliant Tabernacle is going to be one of 2019’s peaks. Coloccia’s regal piano motif, Jon Mueller’s rolling tom-toms, and Dye’s poignant flute puffs betoken a beatific folk frolic, before Turner hoists an electric guitar firestorm over the Elysian scenario. The whole song feels and sounds like a new creation/destruction myth blossoming before your blessed ears.
On her blog, Coloccia explains that the song focuses “on the matrilineal connection to my mother, grandmothers and great grandmothers. In the video I dress up in their clothes and jewellery, I wash their blankets and make their beds. I was attempting to follow in the strength of their footsteps—that when seen as domestic—were silenced and made invisible/mundane—and instead elevate them to the full colour of the present. I wanted to find the power of their souls, and carry that through visuals of where I live, and the land that surrounds our home.”
