"The collection of instruments, sounds, gestures, images and words recorded for this album can perhaps best be understood as an attempt at a kind of speculative folk music, a music envisioned as alive in its transmissions, in its resonances and reverberations both through and with people. Not the nationalist kind of folk, nor the nostalgic, rather an imagining of how collectivity might sound at some point ahead: an orchestra of future souls, no conductor but a common spark, a pulse of breath between them: electro-conductive communality for when the power goes out. Sounding objects built with bodies and for them - with all manner of resonances between them - realized from the leftover materials, ruins, memories and detritus of ourselves in the world."-NI VU NI CONNU

Listed in Thurston Moore's 350 Best Albums of 2025, Breath Vessels marks a striking expansion of Liz Allbee's practice, moving beyond her widely recognised work with trumpet into a deeply physical and resonant sound world shaped by breath, gesture, and handmade instruments. Built around a set of self-constructed acoustic devices — the "breath vessels" — the album foregrounds respiratory rhythm as both a structural and expressive force, situating the body itself as the primary generator of form.

Rather than relying on conventional melody or linear development, Allbee works with homemade acoustic instruments, drones, percussive impulses, tuning forks, sine waves, and voice, allowing sound to emerge through airflow, vibration, and material response. These elements interact in slow-moving, tactile layers, producing music that feels simultaneously fragile and elemental, with textures that hover between meditative stillness and post-apocalyptic unease.

The result is a kind of speculative folk music — non-nostalgic and unmoored from tradition — imagining collectivity through shared resonance and electro-acoustic communion. Widely praised for its inventiveness and atmospheric depth, Breath Vessels stands as a powerful example of contemporary experimental music that privileges listening, presence, and the intimate mechanics of sound itself.