The prolific Oakland-based singer-songwriter and visual artist Stephen Steinbrink has been in the game for many years, and he has collaborated with people like Boy Scouts, Emperor X, Dear Nora, and Jay Som. We last heard from Steinbrink when he released his 2023 album Disappearing Coin, and now he's announcing plans to follow it with a new one called In A Split Mirror.
Steinbrink helps run Headlands Center For The Arts, an artist residency on a decommissioned military base, and that's where he recorded In A Split Mirror. He got help from LAKE's Andrew Dorsett on piano, Cole Pulice on saxophone, Body Double's Chase Kamp on drums, and former Pinegrove member Nick Levine, who records as Jodi, on pedal steel. Lead single "Magic Mirror" is a gentle, elegant meditation on the mutable nature of identity. Here's what Steinbrink says about it:
In 2013, I was on the subway in New York City, and a man came on the train who could’ve been my twin, only he was in his late 50s or early 60s, and I was 25. We looked uncannily similar, down to every article of clothing we were wearing and the tiny micro-gestures in how we carried ourselves. Sitting on opposite sides of the train, we kept glancing at each other, almost laughing because it was so strange and absurd. The friend I was with on the train took a picture of him with his Motorola Razr as we got off at our stop. That scene came back to me when writing "Magic Mirror," thinking about past selves returning to the present through memory, somewhat warped, recognizable but othered, experiencing oneself through atemporal facsimile identities...
I shot the video for "Magic Mirror" in the same room where I recorded In A Split Mirror, inside a 125-year-old structure overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The room sits one floor above what is supposedly the first or second oldest regulation bowling lane on the West Coast. Dozens of mice watched me work over a few weeks as I created a strange little non-sensical office with gallons of lead encapsulant, a hunk of obsidian, lucky talismans from home, and weird stuff that was just lying around in the basement. Like most creative projects, I had no idea what I was doing really and enjoyed the iterative approach I took. My friend Olja Triaška Stefanović from Bratislava gave me this giant inflatable ball in 2024 and inspired me to project animations and videos I made onto its surface.
Below, check out Steinbrink's self-directed "Magic Mirror" video and his In A Split Mirror tracklist.
TRACKLIST:
01 "It's Not My Dream"
02 "Fragmented Soul"
03 "Calcified"
04 "I'm A Swimming Pool"
05 "I'm A Worm"
06 "Black Waterfall"
07 "Magic Mirror"
08 "Magnum PI"
09 "Torch Moth Yarn"
10 "Driving Around In Arizona"
11 "Opening Windows In May"
In A Split Mirror is out 10/30 on Sedimentary Archive/Mansions And Millions. Pre-order it here.
