Gilded ambience rules this album, perhaps runoff from Ott.’s last full-length release—2008’s space age inspired Skylon. Though it shares its name with a decommissioned Soviet space station, the oft-sampled chirping of birds, crickets, and the like, give Mir an organic edge, timely for the advent of Spring.

 

Mir can be light-hearted, carefree even. The playful, reggae-tinged “One Day I Wish To Have This Kind of Time” has a self-aware childishness, while “A Nice Little Place” floats by with fuller, swirling strains.

 

Other tracks ring with more of a factory-grade goth edge. Ott. captures sweepingly tragic (“Owl Stretching Time,” “Squirrel and Biscuits”) and inanely dystopian (“Mouse Eating Cheese”) before tying the album up with the deep glistening of “The Aubergine of the Sun.”

 

Ott. executes each track with surprising sincerity. Mir is a clear testament to his long-standing advocacy for a precise, pristine electronic sound. Ott. doesn’t disregard the movement of electronic music trends, but he reacts by progressing in a different direction, answering the harsh with the heartfelt and the dissonant with the harmonious.