What’s your perception, right this second? I guarantee you it will change as soon as you enter the Garden of Mind, a realm conjured by Parallax ’48, a mysterious duo of abbreviated first names and last names, separated by a slash: A. Boyd / M. Bailey. Spooky! Spooky nothing, though, when you press play and longform tones stretch and refract like light made audible. Those are the “Cracks in the Crystal,” the result kaleidoscopic tessellations of sound, and the geometry of the track is its main draw. It’s easy to imagine yourself on a physical plane even as ethereality threatens to overwhelm. The prism is reversed (or is it), then time moves forward, then all collapses to nostalgia and “Leaves” appears, a moment carved in time and observed from a fixed point of great distance. “Leaves” builds and crests, a meteoric high point in existence, a summary of innocence and a fleeting notion. “Cloud,” “Window,” all are fixed points as well, abrupt waystations on the cosmic path, each filtering human experience through waveforms. “Phonetics” might be the key to the whole thing, as two separate ideas emerge and bleed into each other, found sound and astral drift colliding in a heavenly realm where dreams are strengthened and maintained, processed into reality. Both “Disappear” and “For” are piano-based excursions, both acting as fitting denouement as you materialize on the other side, light filled, fully whole after spending your time within the Garden of Mind. What made you this way, why was there such an intense connection? Objects, images, perceived once, take on new meaning on the other side of an encounter with Parallax ’48. It’s like the picture you were taking, scene fully realized, is now taking you instead of the other way around. Seems like tending that garden is the most important thing you may ever do.
Parallax ’48
Doom Trip
--Ryan Masteller
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