Everyone feels sad once in a while. It’s a fairly basic human emotion and completely normal. Musicians also feel sad from time to time and try to reflect their emotions through their music. Some emphasize on making you feel better and others on dragging you deeper to the depths of depression. Those are the most common approaches to sadness, nothing wrong with them, but wouldn’t you really like an album that is apathetic towards your sadness, an album that doesn’t call your girlfriend a cunt for you, but just sits down next to you and says “yep, you’re pretty depressed” and lets you solve your own emotional baggage?

As you may have guessed, “Blurred In My Mirror” isn’t a very happy album, it’s not sad either, but eerily dark and empty. It’s the musical equivalent of Silent Hill; quiet and void of life. All the music is performed electronically or filtered so much that the humanity of music has become indistinguishable. Noriko’s singing, on the other hand, is the lone human voice in the wind. Naked and fragile, her voice bleakly tries to say something, irregardless of what goes on with the background music. I think this is what makes the album so “eerily dark.” The backgrounds are frantic and loud while Noriko is quiet and calm; they exist in the same space but don’t seem to acknowledge each other.

Musically “Blurred In My Mirror” is sort of like if Portishead played Portishead, with a slight flavor of “let’s be more like Radiohead.” I don’t think I need to explain the Portishead similarities, but the Radiohead influences might be harder to catch. Think of “Amnesiac” toned down to bare essentials; minimal usage of drums, violins/cellos, guitars, pianos and such. Take that and add the downtempo rhythm and general eeriness from Portishead, and there’s the album for ya. Though that doesn’t sound like a unique concept, Tujiko Noriko manages to stay distinguishable and do her own thing like no one else, and god damn… It won’t make you feel good, quite the opposite, but it’s still a fairly enjoyable listen. In fact, if it turns out that everyone hates this album, shall this be my last review on the site.

by Saku