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Interview filmed in Lima, Peru.
Mirrors is the second album by endlessly influential South London producer Mala. It follows his 2012 Brownswood release where Gilles Peterson invited the producer to soak up Cuba’s music and culture to turn the results into Mala In Cuba. But Mirrors is less Mala In Cuba Mk II and more the realisation of a creative method that works for this most understated and intuitive producer: digging deep into the roots of a culture, recording local musicians and sounds, and using the recordings as source material and storyboard for a record.
The product of repeated visits to dive into Peru’s music, it revolves around tempo and flow, working local Afro-Peruvian percussionists, grassroots tap dancers and an Andean soprano into its fourteen tracks. Mala went there for a month, visiting Lima along with Cusco and the Sacred Valley just outside of the capital.