Golden Vessyl of Sound

Yume Bitsu (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 4, 2002)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: K. Records
• ASIN: B000066JGD
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #197,692 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Like swimming in lovely mist clouds..., December 18, 2002

By 

M. Harris "lookingfortheprize" (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Golden Vessyl of Sound (Audio CD)

Off the bat, this is probably the best release of 2002, tied perhaps with Do Make Say Think and Godspeed You! Black Emperor. It's soooo glorious.

I found out about Yume Bitsu from reading all the offbeat music website one comes across when they are addicted to finding out about new bands...www.[deleted].com, www.[more deletion].com, etc...and I tried it out on a whim from the glowing reviews.

I was already an avid fan of drone-ish rock...Spiritualized and Dandy Warhols come to mind in relation to this group. This band creates incredibly beautiful and unique waves of sound. The term "soundscape" is overused, but it comes to mind immediately in relation to Yume Bitsu. Delay and reverb abound, but what sets this album apart is the variety of instruments, and more importantly the unique way those instruments are used. Track 6, for instance, edges along with dissonant horn notes, before giving way to sweetly crafted guitar patterns.

The use of vocals is possibly the release's most distinct feature. They appear only in cameo sections, but when they do, they swirl alongside the waves of guitar sound in most lovely fashion. Instead of being merely another drone addition, the voices stand alone, a rare occurance within the genre.

This album bursts at the seems with trancendence and originality...give it a whirl, let it take you anywhere you wish.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dream Beats, May 27, 2003

By 

LuciferSam (San Jose CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Golden Vessyl of Sound (Audio CD)

The band's name translates from Japanese as "Dream Beats". My first encounter with Yume Bitsu was made through [local] radio and their sound stood up from the rest of the so called Space Rock/Indy seen.

None of the songs on Golden Vessyl of Sound have titles. Yume Bitsu created the tracks out of improvisations, fragments, and barely structured pieces, and the band felt that it would seem contrived to create titles in retrospect. It's fitting, because the resulting album is hardly something that can be broken down into simple songs. If you are looking for similar bands to compare their sound, I find that "My Bloody Valentine" mixed with "Godspeed, you black Emperor" would be a good equivalent and especially on this album. Golden Vessyl is hardly mellow, ambient music. It is a difficult album that demands your attention. Golden Vessyl is quite rewarding and well worth the effort, you time and money!

[...]

4.0 out of 5 stars An Intriguing Vessel, September 22, 2011

By 

kabalabonga - See all my reviews

This review is from: Golden Vessyl of Sound (Audio CD)

No space-rock band working with heavily textured drones at the turn of the century could, in my opinion, create a sense of dynamic tension that built organically from a patiently moderate tempo to a sense of sustained explosiveness containing a real undercurrent of melodicism better than Yume Bitsu, a sound perfected on their eponymous sophomore release and refined on its successor, "Auspicious Winds". They also excelled at creating a sense of contemplative ambience through channeling that texture through synthesizers and the effects rack of their guitars in order to create a dense, infinite tapestry of sound. The band typically separated tracks built around heavy distortion and chiming, multiplicative riffing from the ones driven by synthesized orchestration purely ambient in nature.

"Golden Vessyl Of Sound" seems to adhere to this pattern initially; "Song 1" builds into an ever-expanding crescendo of heavy distortion and elongated riffing, backed by Adam Forkner's wordless keening, while "Song 2" is built around a repetitive, staccato keyboard figure with punctuative percussion. "Song 3" reverts to a wistfully meditative guitar-driven cut with sparse vocalization by Forkner.

It's on several of the succeeding tracks that these lines are blurred. Previous reviewers have mentioned that "Golden Vessyl" was recorded in an entirely improvised fashion. "Song 4" is indicative of this; it pulsates in synthesized waves that show no signs of shrugging off the levitiational, ambient progression until a heavily modulated guitar drone begins to emerge. "Song 5" serves as a short bridge into "Song 6" , again driven by swirls of synthesized keyboards, builds accretively with the addition of a clarinet and trombone streaming in slow, fluidly aranged drones through the track, meeting heavily-distorted guitar feedback that morphs into a heavily-fuzzed drone working its way toward a climax over an expansive 18 minutes.

"Song 7" re-visit the mythos of Drysstin, first explored on "Auspicious Wind"'s "Mothmen Meet The Council Of Frogs". A peaceful, heavily-elongated drone gradually builds to an explosive onrush as Forkner intones a funeral dirge for the premature death of the crown prince of the moth-people. "Song 8" is a quiet, instrumental piece, driven primarily by a plaintively-reverbed guitar. "Song 9" again combines visceral, heavily-droning, tonally elongated guitar and reflective, experimental ambience.

And while not always building to that sense of sustained, explosive release characterizing their most epic tracks, Yume Bitsu develops an even more intricate sense of textural byplay. For a release that was spontaneously recorded, there's a remarkable sense of cohesion, though it isn't as seamlessly integrated as their self-titled sophomore CD. And the pervasive undercurrent of melodicism is especially noticeable, even during the progression of their most experimental cuts (4 and 9), made all the more distinctive because of the improvisational nature of "Golden Vessyl". And for that reason, it demands more than one listen-through to reveal all of it nuances, and to develop an appreciation for it. Recommended.