VESSEL

resist

CD/LP, expanding records

Slowly the fog outside is lifting on this late September morning. I put “resist” into the player of my laptop at the office and now I am slowly awaking for the day and the work ahead. (Okay, it is not true. I am writing this, of course, at home at night, because at work I don’t have time to do a lot not-work related stuff, except for some forum-bashing and internet-research, but it is true that this record used to be my morning call at work for quite some time now in alternation with Hobotalk’s “Note on Sunset” so it is no journalistic problem any way.) Softly toned down IDM beats dissolve into melancholic keyboard patterns that sway around my head in a pristine beauty. Just don’t get me up to quickly but treat me with ease and I’ll come around a fitfully guy and not my unpleasurable grumpy self in the mornings. See, even though I am awake for two hours now I am only slowly starting to get energized enough to fully face what’s up ahead. But once I go I’ll keep running till way past midnight, completely without coffee or guarana.

I’ll give you the funny factoid straight away: Gavin Toomey, the man behind Vessel, has done some graphic or design or computer work for “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, that movie with Johnny Depp based on a semi-legendary American kid’s book from the Seventies. I thought on where the distinctive connectors between that factoid and the music on “resist” were, but I couldn’t find any, except for this movie-job giving him the money to produce music in his spare time. Some seem to have hinted that the dreamlike state of the movie would also be readable in the record, but I don’t see it. I mean, there is an ephemeral air of looseness and transcendence in both works, but not the same one and in my opinion without connection. Moreover, Toomey has also worked on special effects for “Blade 2”, “Mission Impossible” and the Harry Potter movies – so what does that mean? He also worked in the team that produced Uncle’s “Rabbitt in your headlight video” (sure you remember, with that guy in the tunnel getting knocked down by cars while striding on until finally a big mercer crashes into bits at him while he stays unharmed, great thing) and I see a way bigger connection musically here in some more haunting and dark sounds (check the almost spooky atmosphere on “Ran”, which fortunately gets solved into a nice piano ending). It is true, Toomy has really come around, his biography spawning out from visual effects in Hollywood to the Pet Shop Boys, which is quite impressive. But that shouldn’t overcloud the music, should it?

On “resist” you’ll find more lively tracks like “turn” back to back with almost downbeat (except for the boring straight beats tunes such as “State”, some are more straightforward such as “Dry” while others seem to fold into themselves and really spiral into a cinematic blow up ending. Unlike maps+diagrams (or Arden, or Lokai to name some artists interested in the depth and the surface of their sounds who are not on the same label) there is less focus on melodies, but the percussive straightforwardness gives away the roots of this music, which are firmly stuck in IDM still. So this is the very modern, urban music that I once called “architectural electronica” (see Novel23), which nevertheless is too lively and moving to really fit this label.

During the course of the record the beats get more and more submerged by the textural side of the sounds and when you have come to track nine, “parent”, the beats have been reduced to a just a little creak here or a crackle there but sunken into a dense and dark soundscape that seems as silent as deep sea diving. During the last quarter of the record things go upward again. Another surprise is the almost bagpipe-like melody and big drums on “gripper” towards the end of the record, like the welcoming salute once you have come back to the surface. Or like a invitation to dance, where you don’t have to.

There have been some considerations as to the backwardness or self-centeredness of this style of music because the apparently strict rules seem to make progress very hard and releases very similar (if you check out the catalogue of expanding records alone you’ll see where that opinion comes from – on the other hand it is good strategy for a small electronica record label to remain true to a certain style to not contrast consumer expectations) and I’ll admit that there is a danger of it getting into the same rut as postrock did a few years ago. But on the other hand, there are still some records in the postrock genre that I like to put on still today, which easily make up in listening pleasure to all those other records in my collection that I never pick up anymore. In our times of ringtones destroying music I am happy to realize that there are still a lot of people around caring about music in a broader sense. I’ll “resist” to my evergrowing stock of records that form the “check here when randomly looking for something good”-pile.