Atlas Sound is Bradford Cox’s solo effort apart from his successful band, Deerhunter. Atlas Sound serves as his sounding board for musical elements and constructions that are either cast off from Deerhunter’s albums or could never fit the mold of Deerhunter’s sound or construction. Cox has been calling himself Atlas Sound since he has been making music, because “Atlas Sound” is the brand of tape-recorder he used when he was young to loop his voice and record songs. The influences of these tape-record days poke through in his most recent effort as Atlas Sound, Parallax.
Deerhunter’s most recent release, Halycon Digest (which, by the way, is excellent), refocused the band towards a more rounded out and organic sound that rarely relied on effects outside of the band’s instruments. Cox uses Parallax to push his instrumental flights further into the psychedelic than would be readily achieved with Deerhunter. The first half of the album contains most of Cox’s looped and lush song constructions, while the second half is a closer approximation to the work he has done with Deerhunter.
“Te Amo,” the third song off Parallax, is Atlas Sound’s dreamiest construction on the album. The songs fluttering instrumentation is carefully built from repetitive and delicate samples. The song is lush and full, and it provides one of the best springboards for Cox’s hypnagogic voice and lyrics. “Te Amo” is a great example of what Cox is able to create outside of the framework of Deerhunter, and although the second half of the album doesn’t reach the experimental peak that “Te Amo” reaches in the first half, the album is still an essential work from Bradford Cox.