Demos

People Of Santiago - Vessels EP

Sam Wetherell 00/00/0000

Rating: 3/5

This is music to listen to while driving at 90mph down a tunnel in the middle of the night. Unfortunately, in the stale light of day, devoid of car and tunnel, People of Santiago's four track EP Vessels, may have a slightly diminished effect.

Opening track - “Death of Logic” is a promising enough start though. Post-rock neatly diced out in a chewable four minute chunk, it's the sound of Godspeed You! Black Emperor loosing a fight with a lawnmower. Scorching, and blisteringly high-pitched guitar loops are laid out neatly from one end of the track to the other. It seems that since the release of Silent Alarm, the average Indie guitar solo rises another octave for every month that passes. The guitars here seem desperately searching for some urgent climax that never quite comes, or perhaps the entire track is the climax. Either way, the album goes downhill from here.

“Funcl”, is hazy and mellifluous to being with, but is let down by some very boring, clichéd and directionlessly aggressive lyrics - “time, we've run out of time, to settle our differences”. War then, open or understood must be resolved I presume. The dull blokey images of planes dropping bombs on their website goes a long way to reinforce these misgivings (I was going to give them four stars until I saw that). “Ingo Swann”, which sounds like the name of a drone from an Iain Banks novel, is no better, a bit too heavy on the gloomy synthesiser which jars uncomfortably with the guitar and the vocals.

My suggestion is, get hold of “Death of Logic” (which is indecently their new single), blow the dust off the Fiat Fiasco, and make your way to the nearest tunnel come midnight.

http://www.peopleofsantiago.co.uk/