Making Mirrors

From fifty CD copies to millions of listeners

A born Belgian who is currently living in Australia. Walter De Backer is known to music fans, particularly those who favor experimental rock, for his Gotye project. Walter’s first music work, a short record of four tracks, was created in 2001. Walter distributed it independently on fifty copies, some of which eventually got into hands of critics who found the young man’s talent rather promising. Three years later, the audience was offered Gotye’s first official release, the full-length Boardface, also issued by the musician all by himself. A true breakthrough came to Walter after he premiered his second studio work, Like Drawing Blood, that settled down in Australian charts for a very long time. The artist received several big national awards, enlarged his audience immensely and improved his financial state significantly. The latter allowed him to equip a home-based studio. This took Walter quite a while, which dragged out the preparation of the following record, but in the end no one regretted waiting.

Patient warming up before a huge jump

The release of Gotye’s new work, Making Mirrors, took place five years after the previous one was issued. After the first listen, the structure of the record seems, little to say, confusing. The CD features a dozen tracks, but not all of them are substantial songs here. OK, Making Mirrors is a classic intro, by the way, a quality one that leads you steadily into the album’s world, but then what is Easy Way Out? This one does not reach even the two-minute length, sets up a good theme with a retro-rock feel to it, but then breaks down all at once. As Walter De Backer confessed in one of his interviews, he deemed this track as intro originally, but then he changed his mind. All the same, what follows is the true hit, probably, the hottest one for a month or two in Australia, Somebody That I Used To Know, with one standout melodiousness and De Backer’s vocals that surpass all expectations. The song even does not fit the rest of the set, but this does not hurt anyone. The majority of the other songs on Making Mirrors are short, yet musically complex pieces with samples of most various kinds intertwining so tightly that the listener can only enjoy the music and give up making out what instruments are produced here.

Making Mirrors will grant Gotye even greater interest

The most powerful feature of Making Mirrors and Walter De Backer’s strongest side is the emotional charge of the songs presented on the album. Should it be the apocalyptic Eyes Wide Open, or festive I Feel Better, the listener can’t help letting Walter’s voice inside, right into the heart and the mind. Another advantage of the release is the cohesiveness of the tracks. Although the record is rich in varying tempos and numerous sonic effects, the author exposed a great skill in linking them so that one song flows into another without the listener taking notice of it. No songs have unnecessary sounds or words, and there are no too long or too short tracks either. Making Mirrors is such an elaborate and precise work that after listening to it you start to understand why it took so long to make it what it is. Gotye’s only third work advances the musician who works under this stage name into the class of Australia’s most influential and remarkable performers. It will be quite an entertainment to watch the further development of this original project.