One year after Written In Fire, Bristol-based producer Sebastian Gainsborough aka Vessel announced the release of a new EP. Passion is out now via Palpu. It is largely inspired by Brazilian writer Claire Lispector and looks at the complexities of the mind and mental health, which includes Vessel’s own battles.
Speaking about the importance of donating the proceeds to Mind, Vessel said “Given the nature of the piece and what it draws from, it felt right to offer something back to people that are there for others when things turn bad. Mind have helped me a lot in the past. We live in difficult times, and services like theirs need support.”
Check the full streaming below.
Expanding more on the creation of ‘Passion‘, Vessel said “The music came from, or was a response to my long-term, on-again off-again relationship with depression and anxiety. It’s not intended to be a conclusive or literal statement about mental health, but a personal expression of the messiness of the mind; the awful, strange and sometimes oddly wonderful experiences I’ve had whilst feeling unwell.
I read The Passion According to G.H’. by Clarice Lispector, around the time I was making the piece. The mundane, mystical, cryptically repetitive language of this book felt like familiar territory to me. A description of an unwell mind that, whether or not it’s a good idea, is prodding around in a wound in the hope of feeling something transcendental, or more realistically, just feeling less bad.
I wanted to use some of these words in this music. For me they are abstract enough to avoid laying out a concrete narrative, but, in themselves, are concentrated units; islands of intimacy, pain, fear, anguish, joy and love that the sound could wash over.
I tried to imbue it with as much of the thin, watery light that I often experience when in the ill mind. I tried to honour my experience of depression as something nuanced and surprising, rather than a superficially dark or relentlessly hopeless depiction of the mind turning on itself. I hope that something of this comes across.”