Title: Visual Audio Sensory Theater (April 1998)
Author: VAST

by Nicholas Sabin

Every season, it feels as though a certain album becomes the official soundtrack - the disc that you take wherever you go. You have three copies of it - one for your stereo, one for your discman, and another for your car. The summer of 2000, it was A Perfect Circle's Mer de Noms. Two years later, it was the Pixies' landmark record, Surfer Rosa. Visual Audio Sensory Theater, the debut record from VAST, is another such record (freshman year of college, if you're curious).

VAST, the nom de musique of one Jon Crosby, created one of those rare albums that does not have a genre. Complementing Crosby's dexterous voice with guitar (both acoustic and electric), keyboards, strings, drums, and the occasional tribal chanting, each song presents something different, both in terms of sound and emotion. Thematically, the record sprawls - there is equal room for bare-hearted romance ("Flames"), malevolent narcissism ("Pretty When You Cry"), and angry meditations on religion ("I'm Dying").

Although Crosby's lyrics sometimes find themselves a bit too plain ("I was in the desert, I was searching for the truth / I stumbled across you and I know you're not the truth"), at other times they present themselves with a simple clarity ("Where do I put the hate? / To a pixilated screen / That I can't watch anymore") that does well in conveying the emotional content of the songs. Jon Crosby does not attempt obscurity in his words, while simultaneously staying away from being painfully obvious.

Visual Audio Sensory Theater deals with many of the stock themes in rock music - God, love, sex, depression - but gives them each a fresh voice. Comparisons have been made between VAST and the works of Nine Inch Nails, but they can be rejected completely. Whereas the music of Trent Reznor is consistently depressing and angry, Jon Crosby manages to take the same ideas and present them in a manner that doesn't make you want to slit your wrists. Vocally, the differences are even more apparent - while your typical NIN song includes some mixture of hissing, growling, and screaming, a VAST track displays a very broad vocal range, one that can change directions at a moment's notice. The final bridge of "Touched" is an especially amazing example of this.

On the whole, Visual Audio Sensory Theater is an album which offers you a broad range of sounds and emotions to deal with, never sacrificing its integrity in any aspect and, instead, reinforcing the totality of the record through its variety. If anything, it's certainly an adventure, one you ought to take without closing your eyes or turning back.