Records of the Week

NEAR THE PARENTHESIS – OFFICIAL SITE

NEAR THE PARENTHESIS ON n5MD

The use of parenthetical clauses is often reserved for the conveyance of off-handed wisps of information – bits perhaps not absolutely integral to an idea or statement, but rather augmentative or pleasantly illuminative. Musical clauses can be parenthetical as well; textures ebb and flow from the sonic aether of one’s surroundings, as if gradually dusting off a hidden door with their timbre.  An evening springtime stroll accompanied by Music for the Forest Concourse, the tertiary release from San Francisco’s Near the Parenthesis, can easily illustrate this concept.  Several tracks, including “Good Evening,” “Pollarding Trees,” and “Within an Orbit” all display masterful interweaving of piano lines with warm, marmalade electronics and backgrounds of glazed ambience. “Inertia (Stay Right Here)” is self-explanatory in sound, as the track’s introduction gently persuades the listener to cease all movement, only to create inertia of its own later on. Contributing admirably to the catalog of n5MD Records, Near the Parenthesis has once again crafted an album of delicious and seductively thoughtful electronica  (Music for the Forest Concourse).