Review: Mira Snelder - Altered Acuity

This article was commissioned by the artist, Mira Snelder.

A series of dense, spiraling, expansive synth-prog landscapes.

Mira Snelder's 2022 album, Altered Acuity , paints in speculative strokes; the album is not (at least as far as I’m aware) a narrative work, nor do most of its tracks point towards an obvious concept, but it’s the kind of music that naturally leads your mind to imagine fantastic landscapes and stories of the creatures that live in them. Never mind that "Photovore" is not, in fact, an alien light-devouring beast, but a straightforward reference to Mira's own form (described as a "sentient transgender houseplant" in her Bandcamp bio), or that "The Brûlée Brothers" is little more than a pun on the drag performers The Boulet Brothers [Correction: While this song name is a pun, it's actually a pun on the David Bowie song "The Bewlay Brothers"] - Altered Acuity invites the listener to find their own stories in its twisting structures.

The album is Snelder's fourth since 2017, and the longest since her debut. Broadly, they all explore the same musical concept: spiraling prog rock with the typical instrumentation replaced with bubbling synths (for the most part; Snelder herself plays guitar in several spots on the record, while collaborator Dàzhū contributes extra instrumentation on a couple tracks in the form of clarinet and Chinese erhu). I’m not sure if Snelder draws a conscious digital fusion influence - the term is used nowhere on her sites that I can find, and she lacks obvious connections to the tracker music community that you would typically expect for artists in that space - but the resulting sound of her music fits in neatly with the community's concepts, and I found myself pleasantly reminded of the work of artists like Blitz Lunar and Shnabubula (and those who know me well should hopefully understand how high of a compliment that is) throughout the runtime.

This is not to say that Snelder's sound is entirely conventional to to the genre; on the contrary, her influences from the late 1970s/early 1980s Rock In Opposition movement and from postmodernist classical lend Altered Acuity an exceptionally chaotic, sometimes outright unapproachable avant-garde edge. The likes of "Captain Freeman" and "The Lascaux Lamassu" illustrate this most obviously, with the former’s delicious atonal guitar freakouts and the latter’s extensive segments of free-flowing abrasive texture landscape. Even when the album isn't embracing these outright avant-garde elements, the sheer density of Snelder's particular prog influences make the record stand out in a sea of similar but more melodically-inclined works.

Altered Acuity can, of course, be tuneful in its own right, whether that be in the form of triumphant passages such as the main theme of "The Witch Becomes A Witch Burner" (probably the record's outright catchiest segment) or the bubbly arpeggios of "A Photovore Not Quite As Tell, Yet Not Quite As Meek", or more atmospheric concepts like the gentle sprawl of "Every Raindrop Is A Gut Punch" or the ethereal pad-driven segment around a minute into "The Brûlée Brothers". It’s a testament to Snelder’s experience as a writer that she can balance these elements with the album’s harsher ones so deftly, and the album lands in quite a warm, pleasant area overall. Altered Acuity isn't notably long for a prog record, but it is still a fairly expansive work at just under an hour's runtime, and on every listen I've given it so far it's cruised to that endpoint comfortably, remaining engaging and fun the whole time without any real dragging.

If there's any aspect of the record that lets down the whole, it’s the insistence on a realistic drum sound that, ironically, cheapens the broader texture. Granted, I'm notably picky about realistic programmed drums, but I can't help but feel like the artificiality of Acuity 's drum sound gives everything a bit of a plastic sheen, one that more "electronic"-sounding drums would actually help prevent. You can definitely make these kinds of imitation drum kit sounds work, but it requires such an extreme attention to detail and knowledge of drumming that it's usually not even really worth it compared to just approaching your percussion with more synthesized textures. I also find that the sounds that Snelder draws out of her synths can sometimes be a bit too similar to one another, which can make the sound palette a little crowded in situations like the first stretch of "Captain Freeman" where similar rounded-off saws in the main lead and backing chords compete for space in the mix, and in general I found myself developing a little bit of ear fatigue over time. It's a shame that the textural aspects of the record aren't as strong as the compositional ones, because not only would a record that does all the impressive things that Altered Acuity does on a songwriting front while also sounding absolutely impeccable all the way through be an obvious standout in the space, but I think it would actually benefit the denser concepts of Snelder's work to have another vector to explore the stellar atmospheres she builds through; the moments when the album does attempt this kind of textural focus are already some of its most memorable.

If you can forgive a bit of a rough palette, though, Altered Acuity is a surprisingly fun and complex record that I really enjoyed spending a few hours with over the course of the last few days, and it does a great job of synthesizing its influences into something unique even within a fairly explored space. Snelder's music is so joyous and creative, and you can really appreciate how much it sounds like herself. I'd love to hear what results from her continuing to refine her sound, and with how expansive and unbounded Acuity is, I think there's a lot of room for her to explore new elements within its conceptual base.

Altered Acuity is available on Bandcamp . Mira Snelder can also be found on Soundcloud , YouTube , and her website .