Mirror Man by Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band

Mirror Man is the fifth studio album by American rock band Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, released in April 1971 by Buddah Records. It contains material that was recorded for the label in 1967 and originally intended for release as part of an abandoned project entitled It Comes to You in a Plain Brown Wrapper. Much of the material from this project was subsequently re-recorded and released through a different label as Strictly Personal (1968). The tapes from the original sessions, however, remained under the care of Buddah, who took four of the unissued tunes and released them as Mirror Man. The album sleeve features an erroneous claim that it had been "recorded one night in Los Angeles in 1965". The album is dominated by three long, blues-rooted jams featuring uncharacteristically sparse lyrical accompaniment from Beefheart. A fourth tune, the eight-minute "Kandy Korn", is an earlier version of a track that appears on Strictly Personal. In 1999, Buddha Records issued an expanded version of the album entitled The Mirror Man Sessions, which features five additional tracks taken from the abandoned tapes.