Vessels - White Fields and Open Devices (Cuckundoo)
4/5
By: Alex Hibbert
Vessels land in a world where 'experimental' comes with a safety warning; acts allying themselves with it as an excuse to make indeterminable ideas acceptable, the end result usually blowing up in their faces. Some have prospered though, and Vessels, based on this offering, must surely be one of the lucky few. Offering a glimpse of what was to come with a multitude of edifying gigs around the country, here Vessel's realise the dream proper.
Enlisting the help of pioneering producer John Congleton, whose hand managed to turn Explosions In The Sky's All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone into what is possibly the blueprint of masterful post rock, The Leeds five piece also recorded in the same studios, journeying to Minnesota's snow covered Pachyderms Studios to lay down the tracks, and the desolation of their surroundings permeates the mood of opener 'Altered Beast,' as a solitary bass is slowly interpolated by layered guitar. Then Vessels unleash themselves from the restraint of individual ideas; the track slowly building up to a crescendo of noise firmly ensconced in the collective until the whole thing filters into a landscape of reverb, a distant vocal pervading the entire thing as 'A Hundred Times In Every Direction' kicks into life.
The twin pairing of 'Yuki' and 'Two Words And A Gesture' becomes the spine of the album. The haunting piano of 'Yuki' offers a more introspective side of Vessels, summoning up all the ghosts of what's come before into an amalgamation of melodic vocal, a mantra of heartbreak and solace planing out into an electronic free-fall. Vessels hurtle into a horizon of white noise, Sigur Ros' ethereal landscape ravaged by the mistreatment of mankind. 'Two Words' is an introduction to everything that has come before and since, Yuki's introspection transforming itself into instruction; teaching those willing to listen just who Vessels are until the whole thing ends suddenly. Silence follows, you get the feeling had you just left a Vessels gig the venue would fold in on itself and disappear, a true Poltergeist moment, until final track 'Wave Those Arms, Airmen' slowly sprouts around you and your launched again into Vessels world, the final conclusion expected but nevertheless disappointing.
It would be easy to say Vessels were a post rock band, a repetitive timbre becoming the focus of many tracks here, sometimes not always to the best of uses; the middle third of 'White Fields' slowly trading promising ideas for monotony. But if you look deeper you notice that they're so much more than that, complex ideas interspersed with each other to seem so simple, and because of this much more effective. Vessels are the disobedient younger brother of their peers, their unwillingness to conform to what has come before allowing them a freedom that blows through the claustrophobic ideas of 'acceptable' and redefines it for a new generation.
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