Flipping through the jazz section on a visit to his local record store a few years ago, artist Kye Potter found a battered tape by American pianist and composer Jessica Williams. It looked every bit the quintessential DIY release. The labels had come off the tape, he says. It was home-dubbed, with photocopied notes, a little bit of highlighter to accentuate the artwork, and released on her own label, Ear Art.
A disciple of John Cage, Moran uses prepared-piano techniques - inserting objects on and between the strings, sometimes playing the strings with her fingers or an EBow - along with electronic-music treatments (she's collaborated with Daniel Lopatin and performed in Oneohtrix Point Never's band on the Age Of tour, and it shows). Time and again on Don't Trust Mirrors, Moran tricks the listener into thinking the main instrument here is harp, which, if you're a fan of Mary Lattimore or Brandee Younger, is a plus. This legerdemain reflects the title's admonition that all is not what it seems.
"Prism drift" and "Sans sodalis" are built on spacious, ringing harmonics, not likely to move bodies, but to leave them stock-still and blissfully overwhelmed. These versions were later reworked into their more subdued partners, "Hypno" and "Sodalis (II)," for Moves in the Field, and their effect here is like seeing a familiar stage play shot in IMAX, with small, expressive gestures made grandly cinematic.