Slow Vessels by Ian William Craig

Following the widespread critical acclaim of his recent ‘Centres’ album (July 2016), Vancouver-based vocalist / composer Ian William Craig returns with ‘Slow Vessels’, an album-length EP which both extends and radically re-imagines ‘Centres’, rendering six of its tracks in a stunning new light. While not quite an “unplugged” version, it is fundamentally stripped back, raw and predominantly acoustic, the songs included have been returned to their point of origin.

‘Slow Vessels’ sees Ian paring back the dense, billowing layers and heavily distressed textures that dominated the album and re-playing these tracks on a borrowed acoustic guitar and piano. While four of the tracks also feature some minimal tape manipulation, it’s a move that foregrounds the strength of the songs, imbuing them with a heightened sense of nearness and intimacy and briefly reframing their author in the more traditional mantle of singer-songwriter. Deeply affecting and almost devotional in character, this utterly gorgeous re-setting of the songs sees them bathed in a warm, golden glow and throws a brilliant new slant on Ian’s prodigious creativity.

graphic delicate,urgent/full of space,musicmoves shifting tectonic plates of vocalpianotape improvisations –. fields of oldest hiss,haunting: melodies, collapsing answersbillowing clouds of erasure/rebuilding.

ianwilliamcraig.com