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Nick Storring
Mirante
We Are Busy Bodies - 2025
Michael Panontin
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Mirante, Toronto-based multi-instrumentalist and composer Nick Storring's ninth studio LP, continues his knack for layering unprocessed electric and acoustic instruments into fascinating - and at times challenging - soundscapes. Storring's records are impossible to pigeonhole. They have thus far run the gamut from his earlier days as part of the experimental cello duo the Knot to more percussive explorations like 2021's Newfoundout to the glistening piano textures of his collab with choreographer Yvonne Ng the following year.
Mirante is a paean of sorts to Brazil, a place Storring has come to know well through his many visits there. "When I started composing the music, it wasn't as though I was consciously setting out to make an homage to Brazil per se," he recently told CM. "However, the more I sat back and looked at these various compositions, the more it was clear that this body of work was completely steeped in sounds and imagery drawn from my visits to my in-laws in São Paulo, and elsewhere throughout the country."
That said, it probably won't surprise anyone that Mirante is Storring's most overtly percussive record to date. This is most obvious on 'Falta de Ar', a heavily rhythmic track where the ingredients of Brazil's African musical heritage - samba, batucada, maracatu to cite a few - meld into an intoxicating musical stew. Ditto for 'Terra da Garoa', a slightly woozy but similarly intense trek that takes the listener deeper into the dense jungles of Brazilian percussion.
Storring attributes the record's "second-hand Brazilianness", as he calls it, to the various instruments he employs (cavaquinho, agogô, reco-reco, pandeiro, cuíca) as well as to his use of field recordings. But there are other aspects connecting Mirante to the bustling South American behemoth that he says are much less quantifiable. "Sometimes it's in the way that rhythmic vitality intersects with melancholic motifs, or just the overall atmosphere or texture of the sound. Sometimes it's something altogether personal."
'Mirante' in Portuguese translates to 'lookout' or 'observatory', a place that tourists go to to observe the various natural wonders of Brazil. It also sums up the record quite nicely. "Although São Paulo has started to feel like a second home thanks to the warmth of my wife's parents and her longtime friends, I'm aware that there's still a distance between myself and Brazilian culture. Mirante as a title acknowledges this fact while also gesturing toward the panoramic aspirations of some of the music."
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Nick Storring
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