As if that's not blowhardy enough, The Golden Vessyl of Sound, the second full-length from this Oregonian quartet, is a pretentious concept album revolving around the Mothpeople, the Small Towers of the Elders, and the lost civilization of Dryystn. In the wrong hands, this overambitious mythology would fall on its face faster than Frodo in Moria. The drone-dreamers of Yume Bitsu, however, condense their mind-expanding music into easy-to-swallow tablets capable of inducing wondrous hallucinations.
Titles would only get in the way of this free-form psychedelia, which favors sound qua sound over individual songs. In the grand tradition of Hawkwind and Krautrockers of old, The Golden Vessyl of Sound is levitational, allowing listeners the chance to rise above the landscape and sightsee a bit. Aggressively opaque, the swells and contractions of "Song One" positively throb with tension, but elsewhere, analog blips and space-faring guitar bubble like a harmless lava lamp. The ebb and flow of "Song Seven" soars on hang-gliding harmonies that recall the shoegazing strength of Slowdive, chronicling the death of Dryystn's young prince with the album's most myth-unraveling lyrics. Finally, on the synth-and-drum machine embroidered "Song Nine," shards of computerized noise spill like shredded paper on the floor, until a finger-plucked electric guitar introduces a melody as majestic as the Moth-Messengers of the Golden Vessyl of Sound must have appeared to the good people of Dryystn. Like the best fantastical films, these works can be enjoyed again and again with different climaxes and resolutions appearing each time. The best way to do that is to let the songs stand as nude as they please, forgive the spelling of Vessyl, put your helmet on, and leave the Earth behind. Otherwise, the young prince of Dryystn died for nothing.
