Vessel

Seb Gainsborough’s Vessel project extends Bristol, England’s tradition of innovative producers through relentless self-challenge. Gainsborough’s initial EPs and the 2012 album Order of Noise reshaped components drawn from techno, house, garage, dubstep, ambient, and industrial sources while establishing the slanted rhythms and distorted melodies that would mark his style. Although Vessel grew increasingly conceptual on the 2014 release Punish, Honey, built around handmade acoustic instruments, and on the 2018 album Queen of Golden Dogs, which incorporated early music and Baroque elements, a near-tactile character remained as central to Gainsborough’s output as his drive and compulsion to evolve.

Raised in Bristol, Gainsborough began frequenting dance clubs during his teenage years and began producing tracks once a friend supplied him with recording software. Soon afterward he joined the city’s expansive and varied Young Echo collective alongside El Kid, Khan, Manonmars, and Jabu. Vessel made an official entrance in 2011 via the Nylon Sunset single on Throwing Snow’s respected Left Blank imprint and a limited cassette issued by Rekordah’s Astro-Dynamics. The producer’s wide-ranging yet singular approach attracted Tri Angle Records, which signed Vessel in early 2012. While preparing his debut album, Gainsborough also put out the Standard EP on Left Blank. Order of Noise appeared late that year and received acclaim for the skill with which Gainsborough tested techno’s established boundaries. The subsequent Misery Is a Communicable Disease EP, released on Mute’s Liberation Technologies label, further stretched those boundaries by layering industrial textures and warped tape melodies onto techno structures.

For Vessel’s second album Gainsborough ventured still farther. Assisted by his father, he devoted months to constructing a harmonic guitar, a flute, and additional guitars that he combined with sheets of metal and experimental electronics. The outcome was the 2014 album Punish, Honey, which yielded some of his most demanding and earthiest work to that point. That same year Gainsborough joined forces with Immix, the Liverpool-based new-music ensemble directed by Australian composer and saxophonist Daniel Thorne. Their project Transition examined the historical evolution of instruments such as the trumpet and oboe while juxtaposing those traditions against contemporary electronics. After performances at Tate Britain and the University of Liverpool, Transition was recorded and issued by Erased Tapes in 2016. Gainsborough expanded the integration of classical and electronic components on Vessel’s third album, Queen of Golden Dogs. Crafted during an 18-month period of seclusion in rural Wales, the record also included vocals by Offa Rex’s Olivia Chaney and referenced surrealist painter Remedios Varo as well as writers from Dante to Maggie Nelson. Gainsborough later collaborated with violinist Rakhi Singh on a composition that received its premiere in 2019.