“The songs seemed to come to me in the middle of the night, and when I listened to them, there I was. Between two worlds, looking for answers in the shadows.”

Following her last album ‘The Heart Is Strange’ with Susanne Freytag and Stephen Lipson as xPROPAGANDA in 2022, Claudia Brücken is back with what is perhaps surprisingly only her fourth solo album ‘Night Mirror’. But the German chanteuse has always been something of a collaborator, working with notable personnel such as Trevor Horn, David Sylvian, Glenn Gregory, Midge Ure, Thomas Leer, Pascal Gabriel, Steve Nye, Andrew Poppy, Paul Humphreys, Martin Gore, Andy Bell, Stephen Hague, Jerome Froese, Wolfgang Flür and Michel Moers.

‘Night Mirror’ is no different and sees her back working with John Williams who produced her third solo album ‘Where Else…’; that record saw Claudia embrace the acoustic guitar. Written and recorded in London between 2023-2025, while ‘Night Mirror’ can be considered as having a traditional songwriting ethos with organic instrumentation, it is simultaneously electronic in unexpected ways so that the end result is neither wholly either. It is therefore the Claudia you know, and one that you don’t yet know.

Photo by Ray Moody

With virtual orchestrations, the opening number ‘My Life Started Today’ delightfully drops hints of Lou Reed’s ‘Satellite of Love’. ‘Rosebud’ offers classic driver friendly pop rich in Mellotron strings, stabs of Hammond and subtle sequencer while the spacious soundscapes and snappy rhythms of ‘All That We Ever Have’ provide a cocktail of electronic and organic textures, with piano motifs sitting alongside sequencers.

The full sequencer treatment comes with ‘Sound & The Fury’ but then out pop crunchy guitars and nods towards THE STOOGES. Spritely acoustic six strings, bass harmonics, sax and pizzicato sit with drum machines on ‘The Only Ones’ for a pretty pop number. A surprise comes with ‘Funny The Things’, an offbeat countrified number that even includes with banjo and flute but then twists courtesy of various synth arpeggios in the second half. Also showing another side to Claudia is ‘Sincerely’ which brings in a flamenco flavour and more flauty tones for a breezy hippy effect that is unique with its machine rhythm beats.

But with her characteristic ice maiden cool, the brilliant ‘Shadow Dancer’ turns the album on its head with an uptempo electronically driven number with minimal rhythm guitar and piano sparring off the synthetic stabs and metronomic rhythms. Here Claudia’s assuring poetry is supreme in this divine slice of avant pop.

The lengthy ‘To Be Loved’ is a sparse piano ballad than sees fretless bass come into play but maybe outstays its welcome. But closing with a variation on ‘Shadow Dancer’, the trancier ’Dancing Shadow’ sparkles with synth pulses and even throws jazz guitar into an incessant claptrap backbone for a spritely dub excursion.

Enjoyably unusual in its hybrid musical approach, ‘Night Mirror’ is another fine Claudia Brücken collection of nocturnal mysteries, reflections, struggles and obsessive observations. Despite not being a full electronic pop album, there are plenty of synthetic embellishments for those Claudia fans from the ZTT and ONETWO school to savour.

‘Night Mirror’ is released on 4th July 2025 by Demon Music Group in a variety of formats including vinyl LP, vinyl LP + 12” EP, CD, CD+EP and Dolby Atmos Blu-Ray, pre-order from https://claudiabrucken.lnk.to/nightmirror

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Text by Chi Ming Lai
2nd July 2025