Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
We don’t truly disappear in an instant, one day we are here the next we are not; for even in the final moment between life and death the sense of self resides with hope…it is more that we slowly overtime vanish from view, what we perceive for us to be is slowly wiped away like a complex sum on a maths board that is poured over and studied and then slowly cleaned as the student moves on to more intricate methods of discerning the subject matter.
The problem is until we are faced with it, we aren’t aware that we are slowly being solved, that what we thought was a complex structure of issues, problems and fixations, turn out to be a cog, a speck, a decision taken in a host, a plethora of wheels that are just as visual, but more vital than we understood, and we adjust to that new world, observed, but not seen, for the greater good in times of a crisis means we must play our part despite the fact that we will voluntarily vanish into the background.
For indie truth seekers William The Conqueror, their latest offering, Excuse Me While I Vanish, is inspired by the way we can when faced with a moment in history that threatens to eliminate the majority, to fade into the background, that our own story must take several steps back as we consciously understand that our presence is of that to serve the greater good, to be the cog that isn’t seen as the machine keeps running.
It is such insight that Ruarri Jospeh, Harry Harding, and Naomi Holmes have returned to the studio after an extensive time away due to outside worldly issues, and the result is one of magical persuasiveness, of recognising the difference often made when you step out from the ego and give back to humanity so that in time your own cog is given its identity once again.
The album is one choice, each song framing the point of a value of that observation, and in tracks such as Sheepskin, The Tether, In Your Arms, and The Puppet And The Puppeteer, the groove is one of that choice explained, perhaps not in detail, but enough that the words behind it will always be a reminder to those heavily involved in its creation. For we must not forget the sacrifices, large and impossible, small but significant, we made during a period of time that has tested our will and our souls to such a degree that arguably it could be thought we would all never sing again, nor be a cog driving the machine.
A welcome return, always, and whilst we might believe we have vanished, there is always someone who remains to make sure our own work is never forgotten.
William The Conqueror’s Excuse Me While I Vanish is out now and available from Chrysalis Records.
Ian D. Hall