Vessels — White Fields and Open Devices
The tracks are a mixture of instrumental tracks with a shifting landscape of guitar, bass, drums keyboard and subtle electronics. And vocal tracks that fall between sort of pained indie, lads harmonies, and bizarrely hints of Stings vocal tone. But for me the most rewarding and effective tracks here are the instrumental tracks that Utilize dialogue and field recordings or more prominent electronic elements ; one prime example of this is track three Happy Accident which starts with a mellow ambient guitar harmonic strum with an sampled dialogue of an American painter underneath taking about his art. As it opens up it build’s in interesting post-rock fashion with dramatic guitar crashing in and out between the more expansive guitar scaping and slight electronic texturing. Or another example is the departing track Wave Those Arms, Airmen that slides into being with an expansive/ shadowy post-rock harmonic trail and slow builds it self up and up – with the electronics just smarting the dramatic edge to begin with then stepping in with nice coarse ‘n’ slamming electro beats patterns under the guitar dramatics.
All in all a rewarding enough Post-rock album that does attempt to try a few different things with the genre, though at times it does stay a little too firmly to the genres clichéd builds and dips. Certainly it will be interesting to hear Vessels sonic development in the future and one would hope they’d add in a few more twists and turns then