This is a fun record, one whose effusiveness only reveals itself slowly, with repeat listens opening up more and more emotional layers hovering beneath its sleepy atmosphere.
Seabed is a luscious album that implores you to dive into the gorgeous depths of its sound and atmosphere.
It may have taken Vondelpark awhile to hone their craft into an album, but the payoff is one of the more promising debuts of 2013.
There is an effortlessness to much of this album which belies the intricacy and musical invention on display.
Listening to the album on a loop, it’s not hard to transport yourself to a hot summer’s day, lying with the grass underneath you, staring up at the clouds drifting across a blue sky, in a state of (ahem) relaxation.
Seabed stretches out in a state of ecstatically aching limbo, gazing at the groove instead of shoes.
For every James Blake moment there’s a Jamie Woon one, and ‘Seabed’ could do with less mopiness. You’d think they didn’t want to be invited back to the party.
Seabed is drained of an expressive self, meaning that it is a pastiche of Forms, all received via YouTube.
You’d think music located at point at which pop, R&B, indie and the cloud bit of cloud rap meet would sound zeitgeisty and hypermodern; instead, Seabed is the worst of all worlds, all fluff without substance and repetition without meaning.
Like his closest contemporaries, Bon Iver and James Blake, Vondelpark makes sleepy and sad folk music that's fermented into something electronic, bubbly and deeply colorful. Seabed is a dreamy slice of midnight that sounds and feels like sinking into a moonlit bay and into the ocean. It could do with some more energy, certainly, and it tends to drag a bit, but not enough to ruin it for me.