Portland's Yume Bitsu has been around. In existence since '95, the band has already released four albums, and divides their time between a wealth of side projects: singer/guitarist Adam Forkner makes music with drone-rock surrealists Surface of Eceon; drummer Jason Anderson leads Wolf Colonel; keyboardist Alex Bundy releases solo material as Planetarium Music. Their last album, 2000's Auspicious Winds, was released too late in the year to make most peoples' year-end lists, but was, in itself, an incredibly powerful bliss-out session that echoed Spiritualized circa Lazer Guided Melodies not just in sound and scope, but in that its spacy, intertwining jams would, after several ethereal minutes, eventually arrive at beautifully ebbing-- and strikingly catchy-- pop songs.

Bubbling under their newest release, The Golden Vessyl of Sound, is an entrenched band mythology involving moth people, interplanetary craft, and the Small Towers of the Elders. There's a story unfolding here. The narrative, however, is not germane to the enjoyment of the record. As you listen to these nine tracks, which drift from classic shoegaze textures to late-60s psychedelia (with an extended stopover in the cavernous tank where Pauline Oliveros and Stuart Dempster practice Deep Listening), your mind will wander, and you'll come up with images of your own.

Their press release indicates that these songs were built out of improvisations and were not titled out of respect for the sanctity of the "the moment". As such, Yume Bitsu would prefer I refer to the sound that appears when I hit play and then press my CD player's "forward button" twice as "Song Three", but I'd like to title this gorgeous snippet "We'll Be Together". These are the words Forkner harmonizes with himself, sounding something like Doug Martsch after a really good night's sleep. It's such a simple song, with the chiming Galaxie 500-esque guitars swaying between two chords and the aching purity of the layered vocal. And at two minutes, it's also sadistically short, a rare dip into brevity on an album filled with expansive jams.

While Forkner's vocals make only occasional appearances on The Golden Vessyl of Sound, they're a large part of what makes it so special. Our ears have long since grown accustomed to jammy, neo-shoegaze bands burying monotone warbling between sheets of guitar feedback ("It's just another instrument," they like to say). So it's pleasantly disorienting to hear singing this careful and audible on an album packed with interstellar explorations. Hell, the harmonies on "Song Seven", a soaring track filled with moth-people imagery and punctuated by snare and handclaps, sound as tightly assembled as anything off 1970s AM radio. Still, the fact that the album is about 90% instrumental seems just right in the end, increasing the emotional impact of the vocals exponentially.

Of course, as with any band with two guitarists that specializes in long, slowly developing jams, the six-string is the centerpiece, and Yume Bitsu's guitarists extract a fantastic amount of sound from theirs. The echoing, fuzz-encircled tone that accompanies the extended freakout of "Song One" deserves to bounce around a canyon somewhere. Combined with a primal "eeee-yahhhh" from Forkner and some layered trumpets, the track turns into the aural equivalent of a sunrise in Sedona.

"Song Six" switches out a controlled feedback drone for the lead-line fuzztone, the guitars harmonizing with extended trombone drones (this fine track owes a lot to Oliveros). Elsewhere, the punchy closer, "Song Nine", mixes IDM-style drum programming with intertwined guitars and synths, and Bundy gets his moment with "Song Four", which backgrounds the guitars for his Tangerine Dream sequencers, lending an early 70s Rhineland feel.

Though it has its share of dark shadings (particularly the drones of "Song Six"), The Golden Vessyl of Sound glows with positivity, just as its title would indicate. Yume Bitsu is the sound of four men in love with sound who know how to channel their collective energy. Myths and backstory be damned, this is one of the best psychedelic albums of the year.

-Mark Richardson, October 4th, 2002