he photos adorning this piece depict snow-encrusted pastoral landscapes, ominous but icily beautiful, with not a person to be seen. And, like them, Iris unfurls tepid yet chilled, organic yet metallic, like a felt covered gong being struck softly in winter, the snow it harboured fluttering away, leaving its exposed skin to shake amid cold air.

Split into three lengthy parts, Rosy Parlane, is essentially writing aural short stories. Initially, Parlane, plants a seed, the setting, allowing enough time for the listener to gain familiarity with the whistling tones, undulating waves of ambience, and occasional glitch hailstorms. A few steps into “Part One,” and a wavering drone takes on characteristics of a faraway, unseen yet massive, generator. Parlane is quick to apply a variety of evolving textures against his drones. These frenzied rattles that dart through sheets of wind and ambience, create a sense of space and draw the listener in further. Hitherto the alien horizons take on a human feel. A croaking of crickets, a light stammer of footsteps wading through snow, the bristling of tree branches and extended pulses which blow like the wind, craft an impression wherein you’re standing by a poorly ventilated wooden window, ice seeping in, as you stare out onto abandoned, snow covered hills. Rich harmonics, shift, commingle, and eventually evolve into arching drones, constantly in flux overhead. With the atmosphere becoming denser, crackling campfire electronics spark from a dying fire left behind.

Parlane has learnt how to pace himself. Iris invites you to leave a polluted macroscopic world to, instead, wander through a coherent opus of microscopic excursions. Even with an array of textures being used the work never feels as though a burlap sack of digital trickery is simply being emptied. Unlike so many, there is a patience to Parlane’s work—a honed ability to see ideas through to the end and to exhaust their potential. As such, when a harsh hailstorm of glitch electronics pours down at the climax point of “Part One,” it feels like an actual storm has arrived, since the steps taken prior to its onset leads so naturally to this outburst.

“Part Two,” though more languid in pace, at first reminds of Philip Jeck’s “Wholesome”. That is, until an occasional sibilance of hazy white noise and clattering of plates pock marks the almost celestial church organ that began the piece. At just over eighteen minutes, the resonant hums that segue into a crest of reverberating, noticeably metallic, bell-like tones could have been condensed significantly without harmfully circumcising the intended effect.

The album’s most mournful piece is its closer. It begins with a quasi melodic church organ which is soon splattered with glitch interference and sharp shafts of digital noise akin to the clammer of someone sorting through a file cabinet. These sounds are woven together expertly to paint a rather haunting impression, eventually coalescing the seismic sizzles into a high-energy drone, filling the aural space like a horde of echoing voices.

Iris mirrors the frosty, desolate landscapes decorating its linear notes. The music, which stems from largely artificial sound sources, nevertheless beams with a human feel unbeknownst to its peers. A homage to winter nights, Iris is an environment onto itself.