This double album by guitarist, composer, producer, etc. Dan Lippel is sort of his Yellow Brick Road, an album which listeners of a certain age know well.  Elton John’s album was more about dropping the shackles of adolescence and conformity but Mirrored Spaces is more about setting aside the shackles of Lippel’s very busy life with ICE (The International Contemporary Ensemble), Flexible Music, and the daunting task of producing for (the also very busy and wonderful) New Focus Records.  Here he presents a virtual manifesto of works for solo guitar with electronics which, if only by proximity of release date, suggests a comparison with Jennifer Koh’s Limitless.

Promo photo from the artist’s web site

The present disc is at once a virtual CV of his interests as performer and composer as well as a forward looking compilation by which future new chamber music with guitar will be compared.  It is a collection which looks like he culled the best of his current working repertoire to present a sort of photograph of his vision.

The two discs are actually an overwhelming listening experience of new material.  Here are the tracks:

Its easy to see the richness and complexity of this release from the track listing alone.  Having already demonstrated his facility with minimalist classics like his wonderful recording of Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint he presents selections from what appears to be his current active repertoire.  It is a joy to see the diversity of composers he has chosen.  Clearly he confronts the new and technically challenging works with the same zeal with which he approaches his various other responsibilities as performer and producer.  We even get to hear some of his chops as a composer in the live recording of Scaffold as well as his collaborative work with Oriana Webb on the eponymous Mirrored Spaces.  These are unusual works, not the “usual suspects” nor the latest rage but new and interesting music.  Even the presentation of Kyle Bartlett’s pithy Aphorisms are scattered among the other tracks like pepper on your salad at a restaurant (personally my obsessive nature wants to re-order these tracks in sequence) demonstrating a sensitivity to alternate ways to present music.

I have at best a passing knowledge of most of these composers having heard some of the work of Douglas Boyce and some of Kyle Bartlett.  I know Ryan Streber via his work as a recording engineer.  the rest of the names are new to these ears.  And that is exactly the point of this wonderful collection.  I really can’t say much useful about the individual pieces except to say that they are compelling listening.  The liner notes included in the CD release are useful and informative.  (Now last I looked the CD version is not available on Amazon so you will have to go to Bandcamp to order it but I highly recommend it for the notes alone.)  Many of these pieces will have a significant performance life and you heard them here first.  Much as Jennifer Koh defines new collaborative adventures in Limitless with her trusty violin, Lippel brings his axe down on some challenging but substantive music in this forward looking collection.