Octopus Off-Broadway Reviews	Googler Reviews	Hivesfives Reviews

Mike E. French
Professor of Vortexology

8/8/99
All day I dream about: cascading oscillations, chirruping satellites. A cosmonaut piloting his ice cream module across Lunarville Park is greeted by the automaton phalanx of a toy soldier brass band. Parlour designs the sort of music that finds quick purchase on the brain reels, with alien atmospheres and the hypnotic refractions of elaborately appointed passages. The rhythmbots which swarm Svrendikditement moments after takeoff threatens to run amok with their charred frequencies, but soon reveal that their science is tight.

Though the textures of Octopus Off Broadway (early demo copy) predominantly electronic, there is a sense of rock dynamics informing some of the work which may seem surprising to those who have never witnessed Tim's contemplative guitar etchings on Crain's motorized hull. Opportunities to further explore rock's parameters have come by way of Dave Pajo's rotating workshop of math magicians, where Mr. Furnish added his indelible 2¢ to the Aerial-M singles M is and October, as well as working as a touring member of The For Carnation. On Halloween night 1995, there were a few dozen of us huddled on the floor of the Diverse Media bookstore (RIP). With Bardstown Road's vehicular ambience, just a few feet outside the open door, Parlour's first living incarnation presented 2 series of surreal, often beautiful, sequencer driven miniatures. With his brother Simon as excellent company on guitar and percussion, Tim appeared as audio traffic controller, working his configurations from behind a pile of electronic gear and twinkling lights.

If the visions offered that night now seem modest, it is only when compared to the rich orchestrations contained here: the sense of distant sirens that haunts the quiet tonescape of Hop Pife, or the lullaby symphonics of Sleeper. Sounds which, ounce heard, may drift effortlessly among your thoughts; weightless as dreams of space.