Format: CD
Price: $6

Read this excerpt from Norman Records: "Drifting Falling is doing a fine job of pumping some highly melodic contemporary shoegaze material into the ether of recent times. On 'Vacant Passages', you get a label sampler of sorts with 4 artists contributing. Oppressed by the Line has a slice of hazy dreampop on offer -I'd go more into detail but just check his album out, it's great. I describe his sound in that review better than I could just now! The Air Alone on track 2 does a more introverted thang, pensive drum machine and emotive 2 finger keyboard with a listless mumble of a vocal before a wave of mardy, shardy feedback kicks me in the cochlea. Well good. Mole Harness we've not heard from for a while and he wields various acoustic instruments around to create an hypnotic soundscape brushing alongside wispy electronic fragments. I've just switched the trippy windows media player visuals on for the last track, a melancholic, slightly meandering folk piece that sounds like a cross between Adrian Crowley & a stouter Alasdair Roberts, the big Scottish sad-eyes that My Kappa Roots obviously is! Nice gear.

Read this excerpt from Textura: "The first in a scheduled series of four EPs, Vacant Passages Volume One pairs tracks by Drifting Falling artists Oppressed By The Line, The Air Alone, and My Kappa Roots with one by Stray Dog Army's Mole Harness. Ranging from shoegaze pop and balladry to explorative guitar playing and back porch folk, the material bodes well for the volumes to come.

Much like the full-length Soft Focus, “Oceanic” by Oppressed By The Line presents three minutes of sparkling shoegaze pop with, in this case, Jon Thompson's vocal polyphony backed by a church organ and a buoyantly skipping beat pattern. The Air Alone's (Justin Burrow) “I Wish I Could Dream of Spacemen” turns the volume down for an exercise in downtempo shoegaze balladry. The song's lilting rhythm nicely complements Burrow's soft voice for most of the song until a blistering guitar shatters the quietude during the closing moments. “Meet by the River” by Mole Harness (James Brewster) contributes a characteristically entrancing guitar setting, with incandescent electric clusters eventually giving way to acoustic picking and strums. Radically different in style from the other three, “Euphemia” by My Kappa Roots (Scottish troubadour Pablo Clark) is a wistful vocal-and-acoustic guitar folk song free of any audible electronic dimension. Clark 's smoky voice and traditional folk style have more in common with someone such as Bill Callahan than either Oppressed By The Line or The Air Alone but that's part of its charm. Vacant Passages Volume One is a more than promising start so let the guessing game begin for the remaining three."

Read this excerpt from Leonard's Lair: "‘Vacant Passages’ is a new four-part series created by Texan Jon Thompson for his Drifting Falling label. When all the parts are complete, the CD covers will form a picture of, what appears to be, a large vacant passage. Yet is the music a void, bereft of importance or feeling? Quite the opposite in fact. Across a quartet of tracks, the artists involved sit comfortably alongside each other; each crafting their own individual sounds.

Thompson’s own Oppressed By The Line outlet begins proceedings with ‘Oceanic’ and offers suitably grand gestures on this almost hymnal track. I particularly appreciate the way Thompson layers his own voice at various pitches to add soothing textures to his always melodic music. Continuing the dreampop theme but taking it to a narcotic level is The Air Alone whose ‘I Wish I Could Dream Of Spacemen’ emits a languid glow. Mole Harness is a relatively old hand now in layering acoustic and electronic instuments. Once again, he impresses with the twinkling atmospheres of ‘Meet By The River’. Then the EP ends with a slice of Scottish folk courtesy of My Kappa Roots, who effortlessly evoke warmth and nostalgia.

Despite the different styles contained within Volume One of the series, there is a common theme of unrushed, melancholic sounds at its core. The quality contained within certainly augurs well for the next three episodes."