Vessels – Dilate

Vessels take a turn for the colossal with third album Dilate. The Leeds five-piece swap their post-rock trappings for a taste of techno, crafting an immaculately balanced monster of a record. If ever there was a case to do away with the shuffle button, this album is it: on Dilate, context is king. The tracks could seem disparate, from the frosted sheen and panning tick of Echo In to the club-ready, distant subwoofer of Glass Lake – but together they establish a frame of reference, setting you in precisely the right place for when those glacial vocals pierce through on As You Are.

Brooding and swollen, Attica rattles into view. A hulking beast of a track, it feels as much a vision of a future world as the backdrop to dramatic industrial decay. Maybe it could even soundtrack a particularly dramatic Arctic episode from the National Geographic? However your imagination works, it’s immeasurably vast. The whole album is. Surgical and metallic, this is a listening experience that demands submission then softens and folds as soon as you sink below the surface. Bask in Dilate, play it loud and in full. [Katie Hawthorne]