VELLO
LEAF – Morning Star
(CD, Insight Room)
Vello Leaf are spawning the opposites, turning backwards to face the ends
of paralells meeting in infinity. The angelic voice of Andrea McKay
Diamantopolou gracing “One last tear” as opposed to the ephemeral
ambient atmospheres of the aptly named “stellar wind”. How much tension
can be hidden inside softness? And how much of this tension can be taken up
by just one band-project? For the Greek Trio Vello Leaf no boundaries exist
in their limitless existence as they are floating in a wonderful universe of
soft, almost liquid but always warm sounds. Apparently the recording-process
of this 6-track mini album took up a lot of time and obviously a lot of
thought went into every little soundbit. A trueness and dedication to minute
detail only seen yet in digital music dripplers like Opak or Takuma Itoi.
But, once again, there is no real genre or label that Vello Leaf would
fit into, because next to the digital part of their music is also an
important analogue one. Ten or fifteen years ago their songs would have
easily been categorized as indie-pop or shoegazing beauty, but then again,
they wouldn’t have been able this way, because a lot of the equipment
needed to produce these sounds wasn’t available back then. That is why
bands like Ride or Venus Beads have the same melancholic tranquility and the
same edgy dynamics in their songs but sound completely different after all.
With the current means at their hands Vello Leaf manage a way more bigger
and almost epic sound, where pianos, synthie-string sets and layers of
glimmering noise come as naturally as covering your eyes when the sun
shines.
Moreover, they set ambient soundscapes on an equal level with
songwriting. The intro “Floatboat”, which also carries a bracket title
as “(Bring my lover back)” and the aforementioned “Stellar wind” are
tracks that dwell in drifts of sound and slowly ebbing drones. Both have no
vocals and both cede into the following song which has female singing on it.
“Swing on Clouds” and “One Last Tear” on the other hand are
indie-pop songs glistening and gleaming as if polished in the sun on a lazy
afternoon with all the peace and mellowness in the world. The first one with
a trumpet to boast and acoustic guitars. Both sides of Vello Leaf can stand
on their own. The record collections of these musicians ought to be
widespread, from Go Between to Mille Plateaux perhaps.
The songs are balanced inside these extreme examples – or rather
examples positioned to be extreme by me – and these opposites flow into
each other like two rivers fusing within the other songs. On the track
“Whispers” they merge and shine in an everlasting fight that none of the
two cares to win. The songs are carefully ordered on the CD as well,
starting with the more distant and less decipherable territory of ambient
sounds and then moving on to the more song-oriented places, to the pure
pop-songs and then back again, finally ending in the epic pop song “21st
Station” with its really big arrangement and dynamic breaking the six
minute barrier.
Don’t dare to call this just a mini album. Albeit the mini album having lost its stand within the music listener’s community, mainly due to the fact that a full CD is almost the same price to produce than on with only twenty to thirty minutes on it, which led to a trend of CDs chockfull with mediocre stuff, it still has its value and merit with people who value quality over quantity. If you include production costs (time and money and ideas) into the above equation, a shorter CD starts to make more sense. I am all for the mini album. 35 minutes is the perfect length for a full album if you ask me. Anyway, “Morning Star” has a lot to offer on the inside, as well as some interesting and guiding lights to the rest of the world, such as: don’t care about genres or labels, play what comes naturally and then try to make it the very best. Vello Leaf have accomplished this goal.
