"Between Here & There" is Brian Parnham's second full length album released back in April 2005 through his own label Floating Point Records. Originally recorded for a DVD soundtrack, exploring Southwest ghost towns, deserts and canyons, unfortunately it never reached its final point. My eyes are hooked immediately by its gorgeous cover image of skeletal tree trunk on arid desert vastness. The expanse of these regions is always absolutely breathtaking, just the same as Brian Parnham's sonic visions of these waterless environments. The opening piece, "Tread To Trail" wonderfully portraits these landscapes with cracked surface with warmly and graciously spiraling atmospherics with few fragile string sounds and didgeridoo mastery thrown in. Rich in depth and intensity, great intro!!! "From Rush To Rust" merges cavernously sounding delicate tribal percussions and crispy bells, various environmentals (bird calls, water sounds...), dusty sounds of harmonica, didgeridoo buzzings with expressively cinematic and culminating washes. Primordial ambience at its finest!!! "Here & Gone" is invaded by heavy drone walls, enriched by various frightening sounds, breathings and rumblings, and entering into mysteriously evocative subterranean caverns, a truly spectacular 10-minute journeying!!! "Blaze To The Canyons" is shorter piece, dominated by abyssal drones and more massive, sharper tribal beats. More please!!! "Thru The Canyons" is another transitional composition painted by intense high-tech grooves and didge barks, but this stirring adventure continues also on "Overland", which slowly fades away from beats into deeper panoramic landscapes of "Arches & Spires". These absolutely beautiful images are joined again by some mesmerizingly tribal-infused rhythms, cascadingly gliding through sceneries contrasted by relaxing blue and grey sky and breathtaking orange and brown rock formations. Sonic medicine for my ears and imagination!!! The title of "Majestic Valley" speaks for itself, this truly elevating and colorful tribal ambience with nostalgic feel graciously floates through the valley to capture the magics of its natural beauty. The longest piece on this ride, nearly 14-minute "Propette", is divided in four parts and it moves through many ever-changing terrains, ranging from crispier tribal beats with didge inclusions through more eerie, cavernous and ghostly realms to more expressive and intense nocturnal desert dramas. The title epilogue "Between Here & There", a 9 and half minutes long piece, ventures again into the cave's shelter to fully enjoy this deeply organic ambience colored with delicate tribals, sounds of primordial instruments and distant voices. Also the rain drops, birds and thunder are deeply mesmerizing and refreshing my body and mind. A very tranquil closer to this enormously visualizing and immersing trip!!! Not to forget, Steve Roach is credited on this work for few sonic treatments and harmonica addition. It's not a secret that Brian Parnham belongs to great admirers of Steve's desert ambience, however "Between Here & There" is a truly remarkable effort standing richly detailed and sophisticatedly shaped on its own. I even won't hesitate to say Brian is ready to chase his big teacher, because to me, "Between Here & There" is one of the strongest Southwest-inspired desert works ever released and not owned by the master himself. Great album!!!

Richard Gürtler (Apr 15, 2012, Bratislava, Slovakia)
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