Liverpool Sound and Vision * * * *
We have much to discuss in the aftermath of all that has shaken the world and our souls in the last year. In truth it is a conversation we somehow have been avoiding for decades, allowing it to bubble under the surface, put to one side in the race for a share of the capitalist pot, and all the while the planet has suffered through our greed and lack of inspiring leadership, our ability to destroy rather than build with nature.
Society has been, regardless of whether we believe it or not, forever changed by what has happened in recent times, to be now just simply someone who reaps reward from the planet without putting back in is perhaps a truth of exuberance, of violence against culture and civilisation; it is not enough to be silent, we must now endeavour to be the thinking Resident Human.
For Anglo/Finnish band, Wheel, the sense of embracing this particular thought and approach is uppermost as they deliver an album of sincerity, warmth and intrigue and as the opening moments of Dissipating, Movement, Ascend, Hyperion, Fugue, the album title track of Resident Human and Old Earth, that embracing is set between groove and passion, and that of empathy, for it is empathy to the music that we all need, the belief that all have a voice and deserve to be heard.
There will always be people that will bemoan the group effort to push for change that has an activism surrounding it, and what they fail to realise is that without this involved crusade or angry politic we are doomed to keep repeating the issues we have faced untold times before. We need to be that Resident Human, we need to listen more and speak much less, especially when all we can offer is the rhetoric of bluster and air.
The album is well crafted, full of desire and a sound that at times you can feel goosepimples burst through the skin, causing the shiver of anticipation to come and only serves to highlight how James Lascelles, Santeri Saksala, Aki Virta and Jussi Turunen have progressed in their application and how insightful they have become as their career and time together has shaped their outlook.
An album of inspiration, of offering ourselves a look behind the mask that hides our own greed and destructive traits, and one that asks us to improve, to accept our own part in society’s required change.
Wheel release Resident Human on March 26th.
Ian D. Hall