Queen of Golden Dogs

Queen of Golden Dogs is a bold and original statement that collides together emotions, textures and beats to gloriously dissonant effect. It’s also Vessel's best album to date.

A non-household album by an oft-overlooked electronic artist/producer, Queen of Golden Dogs is an intriguing, mysteriously intelligent dark horse of a record. Fans of broader electronic/experimental pieces, prepare to be delighted in the delirious lunacy of Vessel’s apex-to-date.

For an album that veers between the hallmarks of happy hardcore and ghostly choral incantations, Queen of Golden Dogs makes a surprisingly satisfying whole. That’s largely thanks to Gainsborough’s efforts to maintain the balance between entertainingly jarring and modernity-evoking erraticism and a gratifying sense of beauty and peace that feels age-old.

Queen of Golden Dogs is more than a collection of novel (or classical) ideas, as much as it's a assembly of gorgeously written and expertly arranged musical concepts, showing Vessel making some of the most clear-eyed art of his career.

On Queen of Golden Dogs, he slashes the ropes and soars into the stratosphere, pulling off an extraordinary fusion of chamber music, choral quintets, poetry, surrealism, mysticism, and, not least, rubble-making electronic epics.

What's most impressive, though, is Gainsborough's commitment to integrating classical music on Queen Of Golden Dogs. The results, far from being grandiose, are rough, eloquent and compassionate.

It's also as if Gainsborough is processing his overwhelming emotions in real life, and though his erratic compositions are sometimes too slapdash to bear, his refusal to ever settle is commendable.

Queen Of Golden Dogs is Vessel at their most direct and bold, and the result is often overwhelming, sometimes confusing, and always fascinating.

Ultimately, despite Gainsborough’s troubling of dance, of the physical, of expectations, the most successful (and most fascinating) tracks are those that engage with the dancefloor, or at least with rhythm, rather than do away with it completely.

Vessel creates a sense of immersion and collapsing boundaries. [Jan 2018, p.89]