I'm not sure that fantasy, as a genre, is always about escapism. Obviously, you have to suspend your disbelief somewhat to embrace a narrative where adventure awaits over every hillock, where swords and sorcery have their sway, where awesome and terrible beasts guard untold treasures, and the evils of the world can be defeated purely through the cleverness and bravery of those who heed the call and embrace their fate. This is not the world we live in, but I think there is truth in the longing for justice and just rewards that the medieval world of our imaginations reflects. Allied with these desires are certain types of folk and electronic music as sonic forms that express a clear aspiration for connection and harmony with the world- a peace that is so often denied us by the bare facts of living. Parabola West's Stars Will Light the Way is a particularly interesting example of a combination of these two forms (folk + electronic music = folktronica, if you will), expressing a universal desire for consonance with one's community, one's environment, the universe at large, and a synergy of the skirmishing of personas that constitute a whole person. Five years in the making, the New Zealand-based artist's project, expresses its spiritual worldview through a pantheon of personified sounds who burst through from their separate dimensional streams and into our reality like the flaming wings of a phoenix crashing through a stained glass window, transported on lofty lines of neo-classical, ambient, and world folk as they are reconceived as resounding new archetypes. The brisk blessed and rolling calm of "Calling Your Name" is possessed of the fresh, flowing release of the first thaw of spring. "Hannah" is awash in a resonate Celtic rhythm, slowed to a reverent pace and sheathed in a purifying baroque pop melody to accommodate its inquiry into the endless sacred quest of its subject- a kind of wandering spirit who is no longer bound by the pains of this mortal plane. "New Moon" has a refreshingly swarthy and scintillating ambiance, while "No One Can Get Me Here" provides a fairway for a spacious midnight cabaret that ventures into the looming shadows of a gnarled and ancient forest without a shade of doubt to discolor its winsome heart. "The Best Thing" will draw you in with its soothing low-voltage purr, and "Come to Me" will invite you to share in the evanescence of its pale pure radiance under a temple dome of intricate, ligneous, orchestral accompaniments. Some art will inspire your dreams of a better world. Some art will enable you to recognize when such a world is already here, or at least, near enough to grasp.
