Colin Fisher is busy. For nearly two decades his musical output and collaboration have touched many corners of the Canadian experimental scene—he is known as one half of psych duo Not The Wind, Not The Flag, as a frequent collaborator with artists such as Caribou, and as a solo artist in his own right.
On his fifth solo album (his second produced by Junior Boys’ Jeremy Greenspan), Fisher slows down. Reflections on an Invisible World opens on a pastoral scene of free jazz and ambient soundscapes, grounded by Fisher’s visionary performances on guitar and saxophone. These compositions fall under the rubric of reflection, but in an abstract, capacious register. On Invisible World, reflection operates as a formal tool (something akin to motif, such as the undulating tenor saxophone that stitches through “Sanctum”); as a conceptual hinge (consider the track titles: “Monadic Mirror,” “Double Image,”); and as an aesthetic possibility. Reflection can mean to look inwards, Fisher suggests, and the startling beauty of this record certainly occasions the listener such a pause. But reflection can also be luminous, expansive, an opening up. Reflections of the Invisible World masterfully captures the sublimity of this doubling. It is a towering work—one of the most accomplished Canadian ambient records in recent memory.
