REVIEW & INTERVIEW: MIKE GALE ‘TWIN SPIRIT’
Up on his 9th solo album, Mile Gale decided to approach songwriting differently from the traditional guitar-driven style. Inspired by instrumental hip-hop, Twin Spirit introduced an untouchable, bizarre color palette with new vocabulary and quirkiness. It marked Gale’s breakthrough from a traditional sound plateau to an initiative, new adventure.
As prolific as he is, Gale has never suffered from creative block. “To be honest I don't know if it's even a real thing,” he commented. From one sample he was naturally drawn to, to another, adding melodies and vocals, “It was very much an exercise in trusting my instincts and not overthinking anything,” he said, “It definitely unlocked a whole new way of writing songs for me. There are no real limits to what I can do now or what sounds, instruments I can have on my songs.”
Although each song is its own universe, the album has a throughout, distinct stylistic character and energy of a fiction world we enter in our dreamland – a place familiar and foreign, yet we yearn for returning. It is nostalgic as if we have been there before, but it doesn’t exist outside the memory of our dream itself.
“Don’t Mind the Weather” is the quirky album-opener to this strange world with robotic sound effects and imitation of a player piano, reminding of the bar in Westworld.
“Twin Spirit” steps into the world of a vintage music box, dancing as the snow falls on our shoulders. Yet the bizarre, modern lo-fi, hip-hop-infused soundscape is the reflection from the edges of a snow globe. Just like Gale’s music, the imaginative world can be anything we want it to be. There’s no real limit.
Twin Spirit concludes with a melancholy, lullaby-like “Don’t Mind the Devil” under the moonlight, with its reflective, introversive waves.