Artist Feature: Empty Vessel
Tom, or Empty Vessel, is a visual and musical artist from Melbourne, Australia. Tom has accumulated this unique style, which he calls Empty Vessel over 20 years of exploring various genres. Empty Vessel straddles many genres without choosing just one, with a heavy lean towards classic Cold Meat Industry-inspired dark ambient combined with pummelling death industrial. “Add to that sonic aesthetics drawn from my love of late- ’90s and early-’00s techstep and drum and bass, and you get Empty Vessel”. In recent years, he has begun to extend this project into the visual realm, which began his journey with video synthesis.
As someone who had already been into Modular synths for a while, the transition to video synthesis was a simple one. Starting with an Erogenous Tones Structure, It has since expanded to include a small but effective roster of glitch units, analog video processors, and eventually Chromagnon. Tom finds the experience of learning something completely new, like video synthesis, to be extremely rewarding, especially when you can see the results of your experimentation instantly. “Experimentation and exploration are rewarded almost immediately, more so than with modular synthesis, I feel. This is especially true when operating in the realm of analog glitch, as I do, where everything is a happy accident. Sometimes the things you think won’t work, or will look naff, end up looking amazing”.
Tom’s creative process involves a series of glitch, distortion and mash-up processing, then layers using an Edirol V-8. Using contains a multitude of VHS, DVD and digital video sources, he forms the base for any dynamic movement in the sequence. Often he starts with a specific video loop, photograph, 3D object or geometric shape and uses the Structure to process it as one layer. Then he takes the same loop and reroutes a copy through some circuit-bent equipment, before combining the results in the V-8. “The V-8 is a really interesting device. On its own, it can feel a bit cheesy, but when used creatively and particularly with features such as the luma transitions on the mixer side, it becomes the lynchpin for creating complex and dynamic visuals”.
Currently Tom is working to improve his confidence in performing his own live visuals to accompany his music, alongside performing visuals for other artists. His goal is to perform fully live audio-visual sets, with all of the visuals reacting in real time to his modular rig. Tom is currently looking forward to the success of an ongoing project, a VHS release to accompany a mini-album released through the Melbourne label Janus Tapes. “It’s a 30-minute industrial piece that wavers between noise, power electronics and rhythmic industrial, and I felt that an accompanying video release could be really cool”. From now on, he intends to focus on practice, hoping to hit the ground running next year, and hopefully try a full audio-visual setup and even some installations.
