Review Summary: the future has failed us but that doesn't stop me from dancing!!!
Someone else's good times seen through the window of Burial's McDonald's. Wanna rave but my limbs didn't make it into this plane -- HughPuddles
yeah
NYC's Kinoteki came to prominence from 2022 onwards, but mostly with last year's
Dawn of the Final Hour, whose melancholia-filled franticity filled the rotten heart of cynic ass-shaking sadbois aplenty (see above). Exactly one year later,
Faith and the Vessel maintains the
bedroom electronicz in a concept record that takes the "skittering footwork jungle with Burial vocal snippets" to a less frenzy and more breezy approach.
That's what mainly separates
Faith and the Vessel from its predecessor: it's way keener to rely on the atmospheric side of Kinoteki's music. The soundscape is a deep dive into hauntological introspection carried by ethereal synths and a nocturnal vibe that couples well with the same ghosts-of-urban-past style of vocal sampling that early dubstep patented. Despite the less breaks-dominated method than last year's record, some rhythmic meat still supports the doomer aesthetic, mostly ricocheting footwork rhythms, the occasional jungle breaks, and some UK bass wobbles. This whole aesthetic - whose intrinsic futuristic characteristics embrace genres of the not-so-distant past - is embodied in a storyline whose retrofuturistic escapism depicts a dystopian world where people try to find a way to escape from reality - pick your favourite sci-fi work to pop into your mind NOW. What transpires between the lines of the Bandcamp description of the album is the confrontation between what is, what was, and what never will be; Kinoteki's nostalgia likewise lies halfway between the romanticization of the city as it
should have been and abhorrence for what it failed to become, thus invoking the failure of the future, or rather, the nostalgia for a future that was never given the right to be born.
Society if meme jokes aside, the
space of modern humankind is
the big city, whose sleeplessness transforms it more and more into a hypnotic, blurry figure made of always-consuming interchangeable NPCs that just
cannot slow down. Sure, Kinoteki alludes that he likes to think humankind can thrive in an environment that doesn't require such a detachment from one's mental health to provide for one's physical needs - but aren't we all vessels to such a faith, and don't we
(and the IPCC) all know what steps it would require to transform society as such profoundly?
phew, ok thanks but what does this sound like?
In the end, Kinoteki's
Faith and the Vessel really is
just a lite footwork record whose tendencies to the dreamy side of its jiggity rhythms are justified by a loose hypnagogic dystopian concept. My personal [s]shortcomings[/s] preferences aren't my sole reason for loving
Faith and the Vessel - its contemplative approach especially shines on slow-burners like the delicate "Foreverfaith". Its off-kilter juke rhythms also still do their job of maketh asses to shake and feet to tap, even though they are now
always accompanied by these ghostly vocals ("Struggle (But I'll Try"). It also benefits from a more compact and digestible package - even if this sacrifices
boom-boomism that characterized
Dawn…. While some might (rightfully?) see this as a regression and withdrawal to a tighter sphere of influence, to me,
Faith and Vessel gains in coherence and feels less like a hotchpotch of many (very cool) things and more like an artistic of what's to come in the future. Said future might not be what Kinoteki expected, but it will still be his own.
