(05.25.06) Saul Stokes’ Vast has been elusive and coy with me. Filled
with diaphanous electronic melodies that move like birds in flight
across the light-flecked skies of early morning, it’s a record that is
so carefully constructed that it appears to be a natural expression of
sound rather than a conglomeration of analog programming and
hand-forged instrumentation. On a purely euphonic level, Vast
is a note held sustained between ambient chillout and looping trance
worship.
Stokes makes all his own instruments (from the twined angel hair of
babies and the sad songs of melancholic housewives and the sighing
wheeze of slumbering dogs and old plastic water pipe that has lain
forgotten in the garage for a decade, apparently), and they are
devices that make winsome ephemera — wooden flutes like the ones
that trip through “Bursts and Blooms” that are blown by the old
spirits that haunt the dahlia gardens, and the keyboards that aren’t
much more than collections of dandelion pods. “Far Away, Further”
bubbles with the rhythm of plucked rubber and the tripping fantasy of
fairy feet running across wire coat hangers. “Chrome Garden” is an
ambient effusion of light through the petals of daisies and pansies
and honeysuckle; while “Lighthaus” drifts close to shore, undulating
with a oceanic rhythm and a dub echo of undertow and wind whistling
through hollowed rock. Sounds like the drifting voices of gull
traipse across the melody-dazzled sky.
It’s a vastly organic record that seems to grow of its own accord.
You don’t play this record so much as simply release it into your
headspace where it scintillates and perambulates with an elusive
abandon. To call Vast “ambient” or “new age” is to deny the
hypnotic chaos of its movements. It breathes, evolves, transforms
during the space of its existence. It could even be a different
record every time you hear it. Vast doesn’t show you how far
away the horizon is, it pushes the edge of reality back as it unfolds
the multiplicity of its timbres. Very nice.
Vast is out now on Foundry. (Buy it at Amazon.com)
