Frames

Where can the reconceptualization of musical frameworks possibly go in an era so packed and saturated with the inventive logic of progression and perpetual motion? In an ocean of sounds and images, it’s hard to add to the imaginarium without the addition sounding kitschy, superfluous and warped to the point where the red thread of such forays into the advanced starts to resemble a laboratory experiment and can barely draw a full breath. Anyone who approaches music-making from the angle of logical contemplation and forgets primal intuition can wrestle with dilemmas like these. That intuition is exactly what keeps the flame of evolutionary progress burning in the body of rock with youthful energy and elan even today, after more than half a century of inert development since the first birth pangs. Part of that musical evolution are undoubtedly the lads from Manchester – the newly tagged progressives Oceansize, who have added a third record with a telling title to their string of two full-length products so far, the debut Effloresce and Everyone Into Position – Frames. And where does the inventiveness lie in the DNA crossbreeding of influences like Pink Floyd, Mogwai and My Bloody Valentine? In the fact that, unburdened, they float above the mists of the Caspian Sea of their subconscious and sound equally veristic in the phase of hush and gentle acoustics and in the phase of implosions of the moment, which starts to look a lot like the birth of supernovas. There’s no getting by without the poetics of emergence, and the lion’s share of tendentious vehemence comes down to interpersonal chemistry, while the deep mechanics of the fragmentary pieces of a musical itinerary are bound into a cohesive mass of oneness by messages wrapped in the hidden layers of a vocal excursion by the reserved frontman, singer Mike Vennart. The fusion of influences under which Mike Vennart (guitarist, vocalist and main songwriter), guitarist and vocalist Steve Durose, third guitarist and keyboard rhapsode Gambler (who threads the sonic images into one shared fairy tale), bassist and second keyboardist Steve Hodson and drummer Mark Heron developed as musicians can easily be described as a conceptualized purism of their own rhythm and melody, which at its core has been heard before, but is by no means stale.

The new record Frames follows the same principle. Like its predecessors, it builds on the sonic backdrop of a post-Radiohead world, into which Tool, Porcupine Tree, A Perfect Circle and dozens of other musical experimenters have long since woven their steely fingers, the ones who turned alternative into mainstream and progression into the natural state of the artistic spirit. The album opens with the crystalline repetition of a minimalist four-note riff. ‘Commemorative____T-Shirt’ is a neatly ordered whole of melody and rhythm living side by side, drawing its energy from the stringing together of sonic clusters. Your first impression is that it recalls A Perfect Circle, and you just wait for the moment when Maynard’s vocals will waft out of the speaker. Instead, after more than three minutes, Vennart’s meditative voice kicks in, refusing to be disturbed on its flight along orbits above the plains of veiled irony and intellectualism. Among the synapses of your lazy brains. The spilling of emotional ballast is controlled and built up in a way that makes the chorus just the continuation of the verse’s train of thought. Dreams are a single whole that ties back to the moments before. All that matters is the state of becoming, not where you started. In this elementary reach for infinity, Oceansize have waved away time and space. They create their own world and time, wide as an ocean, under which magmatic lava-spewers bubble, volcanoes of passion that is covered up and hidden. It’s a game played on the ears and the mind, and in the moment you surrender, you’re plugged into a chain of the endless flow of thought. The listener becomes part of the backdrop and part of the game set up by the artists, the creators of their imaginary world. All you have to do is close your eyes and open your ears. Even though you don’t know where the road leads, you don’t let it bother you, because you forget the entry point too. ‘Unfamiliar’ is a conglomerate fusion that carries on like an endless thread. The beginning is just the continuation. No slogans. It’s an unbroken whole of crystalline chill and the white-hot warmth of a comforting “Don’t worry. Leave your worries behind…”. ‘Trail Of Fire’ is the logical step in a series of epochal splits of the mind, of intuition and of drifting into the half-state between slumber and wakefulness. The hypnotic rite of piano hammers striking strings, together with the widening of the whole through drums, vocals and the gradual kindling of silken threads, conjures fractal images of blue, green, yellow and red flames smoldering beneath layers of restrained sensuality. The play of nature and the control of the uncontrolled. ‘Savant’ creeps into the whole like a shadow, one that doesn’t cloud the vision. It’s a substantive upgrade and a step forward from the open horizons of escalating genesis. The wondrous weave of instrumentals starts with an organ build-up of the cathartic. Ever had a mental erection? Oceansize are masters of stringing together cliché images that outgrow transience. The Porcupine-ish ‘Only Twin’ doesn’t dazzle by dressing up in borrowed feathers. The being that has blossomed is astral and blurry around the edges, but it has elemental beauty and the magnetism of authenticity. Passing away is part of this existence, and this time the gods decided to shed a tear of effort over the all-but-dried-up pool of life and pour new waters of epic multi-part harmony into it. ‘An Old Friend Of Christies’ follows the same principle and is the rustic part of the record. Acoustics and organ conjure a sacral dimension in a temple of spiritual calm. It’s like sliding into a state of slight post-apocalypticism, the kind Red Sparowes have mastered. A chaotic cut of brutality interrupts the red thread of the sleeping images and conjures the hellish side of a churning sea. ‘Sleeping Dogs And Dead Lions’ is a moment of blooming pessimism. Magmatic eruptions have gnawed their way to the surface and cloaked the dreamscape in the ash of madness. To make sure the penultimate act makes sense and doesn’t spoil the whole, the final act takes care of it. Minimalism is the option Oceansize reach for. ‘The Frame’ is a safe harbor that closes out the whole by repeating a pattern woven into every layer of the album. After a wild ride through the unknown, you land on the shore of a new world. It can wash you up there too, and if it’s not exactly about inventing a new world, Oceansize have at least complemented you, filled you up and put the dot on the i of this musical excursion. Odysseus has reached Ithaca. The epic got a venerable closing act, and the listeners who took on this challenge to their concentration with an open mind can only wonder, with curiosity, where they might step next on the following journey through the half-conscious.

No doubt about it, the Oceansize phenomenon is an interweaving of vision that gets created from one moment to the next. The planetary constellation of Frames is only the third moment of creative fever for the Manchester quintet, who undoubtedly deserve to be adorned with the name Oceansize. They’ve outgrown life and passed the test of time. They didn’t reinvent the wheel, but this is once again a successful experiment and yet another 10/10 gem in the string of precious and semi-precious stones of modern progressive rock. Convincing enough to get put to the repeat test in the future too, and after such orchestral and substantive satisfaction, the boys deserve more than just standing ovations.