Jazz
Amalgam · 23 October 2026
Parallax opens with “Rilles” and closes with “Straight Rilles”, both from the same studio session. In between there are nine more titles and two people, Emily Rach Beisel on bass clarinet and electronics and Bill Harris on drums and electronics, and that is everything on the record: no bass, no keyboards, no third pair of hands. The credits also list Beisel on vocals, which the album’s own presentation doesn’t mention.
Five of the eleven pieces come from one night. Tracks 4, 6, 7, 8 and 10 were recorded live at the Hungry Brain in Chicago on 7 April 2024, and the other six at Marmalade, also in Chicago, on the 12th and 13th of that same April. Harris recorded all of it, and he also runs Amalgam, the label putting it out; the two of them mixed it and Edward Hamel mastered. The duo had been working it out on stage, with Midwest tours in 2024 and East Coast and Canadian dates in 2023, and this is the first record to come of it.
The label describes what they do as heavy improvisation, rhythmic interlock, amplification and feedback, and attaches a list of eleven reference points running from Ornette Coleman and Alice Coltrane to Nurse With Wound, Zu, Boredoms and Muslimgauze. The same press note calls the album a “solo album” when two people play on it and both are credited with the mix.
The five Hungry Brain pieces and the six from Marmalade are shuffled through the whole sequence and nothing tells you when you are hearing a room with an audience and when a studio: the Bandcamp credits do, which is where almost nobody will look. On a record that depends on how two musicians react to each other, knowing whether anyone was watching is part of what you are listening to. The recordings are from April 2024 and they come out two and a half years later.
Rating: 7.5/10
Text by Aina Torrents