Vessel – Punish, Honey (2014)

Having provided one of 2012′s most compelling albums in the form of Order of Noise, Bristol-based Seb Gainsborough has announced his eagerly awaited return to the album format under the Vessel moniker with Punish, Honey, to be released on Tri Angle in September. While his previous efforts have been resolutely electronic in their makeup, a press release explains that Punish, Honey saw Gainsboroough wishing to move away from “archetypal electronic sounds” to create something more organic, constructing his own instrumentation including flutes made of bike frames, sheet metal percussion and harmonic guitars.

As well as coinciding with his interest in organic sounds, particularly “how the physical body has a direct effect on the nature of the sound, whether it be harsh or pure, messy, violent, seductive, or strange,” the album also sees Gainsborough supposedly grappling with notions of national identity, and posing the question: “What does ‘Englishness’ in music really mean?”