The experimental Parallama project was born from the passions of American multi-instrumentalist and classically trained violinist Mike Strickland. Cutting his teeth on university stages, his musical direction broke free from the band structure, evolving into a solo curiosity that pushed the boundaries of sonic ideas. Following the release of the project’s debut album Resolution last year, Strickland is marching forward into 2025 with a continued spark.
New single ‘Runner’ and its genre-fluid trajectory is built on a kaleidoscopic bassline, dancing between krautrock pulse and alt-pop accessibility. It’s quick and catchy, but the undercurrents carry the same Parallama experimentation, with a violin embodying a snarling lead guitar through the processing.
Strickland shares, “The second single, ‘Runner’, grew out of my love for Brian Eno’s albums “Before and After Science” and “Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)”. It started with the bass part and blossomed from there. Though not immediately obvious, the lyrics are about how, in quantum mechanics, things can exist in multiple states at once, and only upon observation do they collapse to a single state based on a set of quantum probabilities. The video for the song communicates this through graphics that show wave interference and quantum entanglement.
I started my musical journey as a classically-trained violinist, and the violin still plays an important part in my music and composition. This song features an electric violin solo, but listeners will most likely think it is a distorted electric guitar. I collaborated with my friend Matt Levy, who added rhythm guitar, added a juicy Robert Fripp-style guitar solo that emerges as the perfect response to the electric violin part, and helped with some production guidance.”
Listen to Parallama’s single
