Album of the Week: Atlas Sound - Parallax

As I mentioned on Tuesday, this week has been kind to new releases so it was hard for me to come up with a 'winner' for this week. Hopefully my fanboyism of both Bradford Cox's Atlas Sound project and his band Deerhunter haven't influenced the decision too much. Cox has been gradually releasing Parallax tracks over the last few months, but this hasn't distracted from hearing the finished article. The album is made up of mostly quiet yet potent songs: here Cox uses multiple layers of both acoustic and electric guitars, sparse percussion and of course reverberated vocals to create what he himself usually describes as "ambient punk". Cox's idol Scott Walker's influence is clearly felt, but so are the voices of Peter Gabriel ("Te Amo"), Conor Oberst ("Mona Lisa", warmly greeted from its appearance on last year's Bedroom Databank series) and Lou Reed ("Lightworks"). Simply put, Cox is one of the best songwriters around, and Parallax only strengthens that claim.

Parallax is released on 7th November via 4AD. Visit the Parallax website here to stream and download "Terra Incognita". Even if you don't want the track check out the website anyway. I thought it was pretty cool.