SEAL ON PSYCHEDELICS

Jamie Woon // Mirrorwriting // April 18 // Polydor

Mirrorwriting is the debut record by Jamie Woon, the so called protege of Burial, who I believe needs no introduction. Throughout the year Woon has been messing with ethereal acoustic folk to mixed results but on his debut he scrapped that and went for a more originality. Mirrorwriting is the sort of thing that gets called post-dubstep nowadays, fuck, even I call it that sometimes. However, Woon puts his own twist on it. This album has deep roots in UK garage and straight mainstream r&b. Well I never.

That said, while Mirrorwriting is definitely just about the friendliest post-dubstep album to the casual ear it still has a lot of new things to offer. It tries to press all the buttons at once. There’s the unlikely fan favourite, the ambient Night Air. There’s Lady Luck, a song that could’ve easily topped the charts if it was released 10 years ago. There’s spirits with it’s unashamed mainstream pop appeal. Woon also left something for fans of the old shit with the closer, Waterfront, an acoustic one that works perfectly as a closer to such a varied album.

Mirrorwriting offers many things but surprisingly it manages to keep them all together and still make this sound like a well flowing album. Woon’s crooning might sound generic at time and at other times it might even have echoes of Craig David (oh dear) but overall he just about get’s away with it, in the end the instrumentals of Mirrorwriting is where it’s at.

Mirrorwriting is an album that will not get into many end of year lists because it’s too polite and tidy unlike some albums this year which were purposely “in your face bitch!”. I couldn’t care less to be fair, this is a brilliant debut by a young and talented singer songwriter and Woon also leaves enough space to have numerous options concerning the follow up. Not only the night time album of 2011 so far but also a potential sleeper classic.