Music -- and most often its abstract extensions -- seems to be intrinsically linked to its visual cover art as the image leads your ears down the music's path. At least that is true for Iris, the debut full-length from Rosy Parlane, that is accompanied with a gaze from a behind a windowsill over a wintry, whitewashed landscape.
Parlane, in Iris's three immersive, sprawling, and spacious tracks, blends the looped, stretched, and expanded sounds of a guitar, organ, and piano into drones of warmth and fluidity. Meticulously and effectively crafting his soundscapes with the deepest human sentiments, Parlane uses the emotions of melancholia and nostalgia as instruments that evoke sweetness and affection. With this tender touch of humanity, Iris is an experience unto itself as it creates aural environments to explore and waves of sound to get lost in for hours on end.
Sonically, Iris approaches the work of Venice, the recent masterpiece by Fennesz, as well as Keith Fullerton Whitman's ambient Playthroughs, with each of Iris' three sections featuring textured soundscapes and digital fragments that are as intricate and beautiful as each falling snowflake adorning the album's cover. But through the gossamer drones and shimmering layers of multihued sound, fractured melodies surface through the lush, endless loops that rewards repeated listens and long exposures. And, if you listen close enough, you can almost feel the frost melting off the window and Europe's vast winter expanse warming as Rosy Parlane's gentle, droning waves drip out of your speakers.
1. Part One
2. Part Two
3. Part Three
More about: Rosy Parlane
