Some bands defy description. Ferries defy their very existence. Fittingly, their second album, Eye Wander, is also almost impossible to put into words. For, somewhere between the last acid trip and the accompanying out-of-body experience, the album winds its way through a universe of spiritual sounds, bizarre hallucinatory dreams and musical ideas that immediately transport you back into a dreamworld. Ferries consistently eschew traditional song structures: tracks last anywhere from one and a half to over ten minutes; some feels like sketches, others like extended streams of consciousness. The album demands not so many individual highlights as a surrender to its flow.
It is precisely here that its particular relevance lies: somewhere between dub, Krautrock and freely meandering psychedelia, a sound emerges that defies any clear categorization and finds its greatest strength precisely in this. Whilst many contemporary productions rely on recognizability and clear categories, Ferries cultivate the opposite: openness, disorientation and the courage to conceive of music as a state of being rather than a product. Eye Wander is as much a reminder of the past as it is of something that might yet be to come. In doing so, the band proves once again that some records linger in the mind for so long precisely because they defy any clear description.
Eye Wander
