See Through Mirrors (album)

See Through Mirrors (2003-2004) is an album by Eth Eonel, containing songs written in 2003 and 2004. It has a planned release in March 2023. Save from the song "Apologies", which was originally a solo guitar song written by his father, every instrument and vocal track is performed by Eth. "Apologies" is also the only song written by someone else, with Eth providing lyrics. This was also the case originally with "Rain" and "Chronicle", but the musical arrangements on these tracks for this recording are completely reworked. The lyrics to "The Path of Least Existence" and "Reincarnate" were also originally written for backing tracks written by other people, but Eth composed new music for these two.

Background
Since around 2006, Eth Eonel has planned to release all of his output chronologically, first as a "Phase" series, going through his different phases of songwriting. These songs have since been moved around from album to album, as Eth couldn't decide whether he should put songs from 2002 and 2003 together (to call "Heartless Cold"), or release as solo albums even though they also contained songs by Aloysius ("Memories of Space Now Gone (2004)" was one such idea). At least since 2018, he decided to put 2003 and 2004 together, both because the years 2002 and 2003 were very sparse in creativity, and because 2003 marked a significant change in his life.

"Treasuring Pain" was originally written as an idea for a duet with the title "Argument/Agreement", but has later been reworked lyrically. The track "Seven" was originally (2005) intended to be the introduction to the album The Heffernan Effect (later Ambiguous Field Of Definition). Together with the tracks "In My Language" and "Whispers of Chocolate / Smell", these make out a portion of the album that where originally refrigerator poems. "Nail" was written as a lyric for Aloysius, but it was never used in that context. "Wedding Song for Best Friend" was originally written very early 2004, but was moved to the end of the list chronologically, as the wedding was in November.

Recording
"Apologies" was originally recorded by Eth's father Ivar Holter in 2002. These tracks were then added to when recording commenced in 2023. A few other songs had been demoed, "Old" being the first Eth started to work on, already back in 2004, but also "Seven" and "Rain". These were demoed using GarageBand. Seven was finalized in 2008, mixed in ProTools.

The rest of the songs were untouched until 2023. Eth had started the year with new found motivation for finishing The Indescribable L (2012), Brotherhood (2013) and HELLO CAPSLOCK! (2014) - three albums that were all mostly done in terms of instruments, that only required vocals and mixing, but he also wanted to start working somewhere entirely different on the chronological list, and decided the 2003-2004 era was a good start. After he had finalized "Sleep, Where in the Waste Is the Wisdom?", the other songs that he had to arrange from scratch came easily. When January was over, he already had 6 of these songs down.

Personnel

 * Kenneth Øvrid Holter - all vocals, all instruments (except where noted) and all programming
 * Ivar Holter - guitar, bass and drum programming on track 14