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Vessels - White Fields And Open Devices (Cuckundoo)
UK release date: 18 August 2008
4 stars
Vessels - White Fields And Open Devices

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track listing

1. Altered Beast
2. A Hundred Times In Every Direction
3. Happy Accident
4. An Idle Brain And The Devil's Workshop
5. Walking Through Walls
6. Trois Heures
7. Look At That Cloud
8. Yuki
9. Two Words And A Gesture
10. Wave Those Arms, Airmen

related
ALBUM:
Vessels - Retreat

ALBUM:
Vessels - White Fields And Open Devices

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Vessels


Sometimes entirely instrumental, at others offering vocals that are barely discernible amid the multi-layered post rock noise or minimal dark electronica, it's hard to decide whether Vessels are an odd prog/industrial hybrid whose time should be long past, or the genuinely new sound of the twenty-first century.

There is more than a touch of iLiKETRAiNS about them. Hailing from Leeds, they clearly belong to a scene that has also given us bands such as Laymar, which is no bad thing. Their sound has the harsh edge of the industrial landscape about it, but also of wide open wilderness - the rusting factory at the edge of Sigur Rós's virginal white snow.

With more than 100 live shows behind them, including the Leeds Festival, there's a definite sense that this is music designed and intended to be played live and very loud (at times - at others, such as the fragile Look At That Cloud!, your damaged ear drums will need to strain to hear them), a sonic assault that should leave you physically aware of its presence in the way pioneered by Godspeed You! Black Emperor, A Silver Mount Zion and their many spin-offs.

The flipside is that on gentler tracks such as the superbly titled An Idle Brain And The Devil's Workshop, they show that they're just as ready to lick the wounds they've just inflicted.

Much of this is no doubt due to the production efforts of John Congleton, a man also responsible for the aural assault that is Explosions In The Sky, while the snow-covered Minnesota setting in which they recorded the album may well be responsible for its sense of space. Because White Fields And Open Devices lives up to its name: a musical experience that has plenty of room to breathe, freeing the band from the physical constraints and claustrophobia of their native industrial British north.

From the haunting vocals of Walking Through Walls to the railroad nightmares of Trois Heures (exactly the time of day when sounds like this invade attempts to sleep that are most needed and most doomed to failure), Vessels have many more dimensions than you might notice on first listen, sometimes overlaying their sonic soundscapes with delicate, almost folkish guitars that half smile, half sneer as they never actually lead you down the prog-noddling path they threaten to.

The music they weave always, without fail, stays just the right side of pretentious, playing with past conventions and current trends, showing how clever they are without showing off. Too melodic to be dark ambient, too apologetic to be truly post-industrial, it may not be radio friendly, but that doesn't make it perfect music for lonely nights, long drives on empty roads, and something to put on in the dead of winter to drown out the sounds of the broken boiler. Long may the muffled explosions continue.

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