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Rosy Parlane, "Iris"

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Ineffable and at the limits of experience, the sounds inside thisgorgeous little package break experiential limits. Though the imageryin the booklet suggests a cold and drifting place, I imagine the musicto be more akin to viewing the sun from only a few thousand miles away.Rosy Parlane's rich and vibrant pulses eminate and exude away from acenter boiling over with the unspeakable. Divided into three pieces, Iris sounds like the universal Omhissing in through subjective ears, playing with the phenomenology ofexperience, and coming to rest in the form of a vision: perhaps acertain place or a certain time will flash back from memory one listenand, on another, my mind will simply blank and release itself fromtroubles and worries. The bulk of the music isn't all zen-likemeditations on existence, though. "Part 2" hums and modulates away overthe organic sounds of glass, chains, and textured friction washing byin an organized concerto for metal surfaces and brooms. "Part 1" rollsalong slowly, almost like a lullaby, until the processed sound of whitenoise begins raining down over the calm. Raining is a completely aptdescription; Parlane manages to create a digital rainfall out of bitsof white noise that, while going to sleep, had me wanting to get up andcheck if clouds were rolling in. Iris naturally moves into themelodic at times; layers upon layers of sound will suddenly match up inperfect sequence to create moments of strange beauty. The layers driftby eachother eventually and return to the unknown, but these briefforays into familiar territory are welcome when they happen and neverbreak the trance of the drones create. "Part 3" is perhaps the moststunning of the three pieces and the most carefully constructured. Therhythmic popping and snapping mix perfectly with the organ flowspassing above and beneath them. Strangely enough, this last track wasan exotic and ominous soundstrack to a drive into the city - the musiccan be heard a thousand different ways and different people I've playedthis for have described entirely different visuals. The end of therecord runs away like the sound of a projector at the end of the filmroll - it's a movie where everyone sees something different and wherethe images stay unbroken in the mind for days to come.

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