Tom Vek Leisure Seizure

What makes an artist slip beneath the depths of anonymity? Multi-instrumentalist Tom Vek could tell you how it feels to self-impose oneself into a laughable form of mystique, especially when his album tally hadn’t even sum up to two. As years kept rolling along, that question crept into mind more than once: where is Tom Vek, and what had caused him to perform a disappearing magic act? The long-awaited unveiling isn’t enigmatic, surprising, or controversial. All this time, Vek was pouring different solutions inside test tubes in his programming den, prolonging the grand appearance until his mad experiment would gauge the exact scientific formula. 

With the exception of fans and critics, the question most will ponder is: who is Tom Vek? From the get-go, he had established himself as a multitasking maverick that actually mangled the standards of electronic indie with some soul. An alien in a cutthroat field, he managed to concoct an artless freak-out of forward-thinking deck knobbing and danceable garage slush. And all this without the budget of the DFA and the electronic division of Nettwerk Records, two specialty brands devoted to the mission of distributing consumer dance pop very much like Vek was. If anything, it got him pigeonholed into that overcrowded marketplace, an unfair assessment knowing that Vek had achieved his fully formed garage band by his own means.

Alarmingly close to being forgotten, Vek reappears with a new bag of tricks, which displays both his strengths as an ingénue and his faults as an uncontrollable gourmand. He hasn’t lost his touch of utilizing distinctive synth textures, like the trailblazing stomp of We Do Nothing, which follows a simple, but effective composition very much like C C (You Set The Fire In Me). First single A Chore also intersects that deadly bass-hard riff combination heard in the majority of We Have Sound, dispersing sonic delicacies while Vek mutters pessimistic thoughts through his snarled, half-sung retorts.

Vek may have boosted the production pedigree around all corners, but the use of analogue instrumentation is preserved to emphasize that contrast. It works for the most part, and judging by his brief catalog, the sound of a tinny, processed percussion would do these songs a great disservice. He’s also taking great strides to avoid repeating himself – the rattling, urban bounce of Too Nice is overtaken by a prolonged siren call, while Someone Loves You goes full-on house music to make the crowd sweat a little. All these tweaks only confirm Vek’s elevated imagination – whether excess is an issue or not, one can detect that he’s in the business of writing pop hits, not a pop album. If nothing else, a banging shuffle that fits every house party mood.

It’s peculiar how Vek took the liberty of taking his precious time, due to the fact that We Have Sound wasn’t a resounding success. Like the title implies, those six years chart what must’ve been a troubling creative process that went from gradual exploration to frantic creation. Whether or not this is a positive, it also turned a young, idiosyncratic loon into an introspective beat connoisseur. If the past had him outcast and an outsider, Leisure Seizure could be ideally marketed with those label heavyweights like a fabric hook-and-loop fastener. Therein lies the problem – Vek may have had a Beck fetish, splattering skronky bass lines and an inconsistent template, but at least he was moving towards an interesting direction. He may have stepped it up a notch, but all the vacillation left him mostly lethargic.