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Sep 18, 2018 Richard Reed Parry By Charles Steinberg

Arcade Fire’s multi-instrumentalist Richard Reed Parry is set to release his sophomore album Quiet River of Dust Vol.1 this Friday the 21st on ANTI- Records. Ahead of the release, Under the Radar has the premiere of the live video for “I Was In The World (Was The World In Me)”.

”I Was in the World, Was the World in Me is a song about the elements and our bodies being inextricably interwoven - about being a human and experiencing a moment in nature that’s so direct and powerful that we lose our sense of where we end and the world around us begins,” describes Parry poetically. “A simultaneously blissful and terrifying moment of “losing yourself”: swimming in a river, realizing that the same beautiful tactile sensation you’re having in the water is, in a way, a living version of what you might experience at the moment of death - the molecules of your body actually merging with the molecules of the world around you…we become ashes, thrown into the sea, absorbed up into the clouds, raining down onto the land and into the rivers… as we turn, turn, turn again.”

The seven-song psychedelic folk-rock album is the first of two volumes to be released in accordance with a seasonal equinox; Vol.1 arriving on the autumnal equinox this Friday, September 21st, and the second volume to be released on the date of the spring equinox in 2019. The new work was Inspired by the traditional British folk music Parry was raised with as well as a formative experience exploring Japanese forests after Arcade Fire’s first tour there in 2008.

“Being out in the natural world or being immersed in music is the meditation for me,” says Parry of the work. “That’s the heart of this record: the experience of transcending the place that you’re in, getting lost in the feeling of where you end and where the world begins, in a dreamlike world of music and thought.” It is music meant to be absorbed in a setting devoid of other distractions, not shuffled into your streaming playlist—a tall demand these days but one worth the time.

The album has been “slowly gestating for the last decade, in many ways a necessary respite from Parry’s other gigs.” according to the press release. “Japanese folk myths, death poems, and British folk music are tributaries flowing into a river of late-20th-century avant-garde composition and traditional songcraft…This is a meditative, widescreen musical experience with Beach Boy harmonies and a hypnotic pulse. Layered songs that move in a linear fashion, following a current rather than circular composition.”

Quiet River of Dust Vol.1&2 is Parry’s independent turn into psychedelic folk-rock after his 2014 album of biologically inspired compositions, Music for Heart and Breath and three albums leading the instrumental ensemble Bell Orchestre, which he formed in university as a student of electroacoustic music and contemporary dance. Parry will tour the record on a small fall run starting in October. Dates Below.

Richard Reed Parry Tour Dates

10/17 – Portland, OR – Mississippi Studios
10/18 – Seattle, WA – Columbia City Theater
10/19 – Victoria, BC – Capital Ballroom
10/21 – Vancouver, BC – Wise Hall
11/5 – Toronto, ON – Longboat Hall
11/26 – Ottawa, ON – St. Alban’s Church
11/27 – Brooklyn, NY – Murmrr Theatre
11/28 – Providence, RI – Columbus Theatre
11/29 – Portland, ME – Space
11/30 – Burlington, VT – ArtsRiot