Following fresh on the tail of Stratus, an album of beautiful upper atmospherics and captured momentary stillness released under his SVLBRD alias, Spain's Agustín Mena returns with his main project, Warmth, to that undefinable space of the mind that exists somewhere between the conscious and the unconscious, where sudden realizations and long dormant truths are revealed to the self in closed lidded formations, and the mind is given the space to drift unguarded, vulnerable, and without ego. Like trying to describe a sensation — loneliness, sadness, love, or yes, even warmth — Mena's newest album, Parallel, eludes the rigidity of description and language, existing more so in the realm of the tactile and the experiential, like the essence of a thing in itself. Through unflinching honesty and purity of sound, the music on Parallel acts as a mirror for its listeners, a moment's clarity amidst the clutter and distractions of the every day.
With track titles like Reflector, Reciever, Convex and Concave, there is an unquestionable theme of mirrors and of things doubled throughout Parallel, deeply intertwined with the reflective nature of the music itself, and a gentle reminder of the symbiotic nature of existence; How can something exist if there is no one there to observe it? If a tree falls in a forest, but no one is around to hear it...? We all know how much the music we listen to can affect us, and yet for some reason we tend to forget how much we can affect the music we listen to in turn. Parallel is the kind of album to offer truths as unique and varying as the individuals willing to seek them, drawing from memory and personal experience to create an aural landscape unique to each listener.
Appropriately enough for an album with such prominent themes of duality and twoness, there is the sense that some sort of delicate balance act is taking place behind the scenes of Parallel — each element seemingly provided with its perfect opposite, each track weighted thoughtfully and precisely against that which came before it. Reflector's synth pads roll over the listener like a slow rippling silk, a soft glow peering through sheets in the muted tones of a sunrise, where the haunted and romantic drone of Receiver moves like a spectre through the empty hallways of a long abandoned mansion, drifting from room to room in a tragic attempt to relive lost moments of past love and happiness, the echoes of a time long forgotten still reverberating through empty rooms.
Concave roots itself firmly to the elemental with field recordings of the natural world, such as the rush of water and the rustling of leaves, a homing beacon of familiarity and comfort that grounds the listener and serves to remind us that no matter how far inwards we might venture, there will always be a way back, as long as we anchor ourselves firmly to what is real — before diving head first, ever deeper into the unconscious mind with Convex, a blind leap of faith from the world of the corporeal into the very centre of the unguarded self, turning the mirror inwards towards the uncomfortable and necessary truths that will ultimately set us free. When we look into a mirror for too long, we might not like what we see staring back at us; but only when we begin to accept what is right in front of us can we truly begin to change ourselves for the better.