Yume Bitsu
The Golden Vessyl of Sound
[K; 2002]
Rating: 8.5
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