Phillip Wilkerson & Chris Russell - Imaginary Realities (2025) [Hi-Res]

Since the first cave paintings, the first fireside stories, art has been a vehicle of escape from the stressors of the world. Philip Wilkerson and Chris Russell’s newest collaboration, Imaginary Realities, was written with that escape in mind. Wrought in bright drones and glimmering flourishes, this album is a portal to another place, a reprieve from the mundane in the realm of the extraordinary.

While prior collaborations Vague Traces and Dark Measures took inspiration from our world, Imaginary Realities is quintessentially dreamlike, from the opening chimes of “Liftoff” to the closing chords of the title track. “Dissipation” shimmers and warbles like polarized magnets drawing closer and then receding. “Revealing the Concealed” begins with sparse piano before blooming into a shifting nebula of harmonic textures. “Abandoning Desire” hums with contemplation, with shades of Russell’s dark ambient solo work in its vibrating drones. Gentle strums add a percussive heartbeat to the drone’s sonorous breaths, ritualistic in their rhythm. Then, the piece brightens, carried by a sun-washed texture from the caverns to the skies. Back and forth, it compresses and releases, a seamless dance between darkness and warmth: the sound of all the needs for earthly possession, one by one, held to the light and let go. The closing title track is a sonic image of aurorae, colors swimming in the night sky.

Russell describes the joy of collaboration as “being taken to places you couldn’t get by yourself,” and that sense of exploration is abundant here. In its shimmering fractals of sound, Imaginary Realities gives glimpses of other worlds, inviting the listener to move from vision to vision as a voyager in a dream.