VITOR JOAQUIM – Filament

Kvitnu

“We live in a world full of information and in risk of permanent ignorance”. Vitor Joaquim is well aware of sensible people’s frustration at the impossibility of retaining significance nowadays, thus he devised Filament as a response to a situation that he obviously doesn’t like. The result is a five-track CD of elaborately mild electronica: calm enough to lull a relaxed listener into partial oblivion, organically active to the point of allowing the detection of thousands of different impulses and micro-codes. The trip is constellated by hints to the interchangeability of various states. Liquid to solid, to gaseous; synthetic to semi-vocal; rhythmically charged to almost motionless. Occasionally, the tones get very near to the darker sides of ambient, a level of oppressiveness taking command in bleak scenarios symbolizing a lack of human improvement. In the finest sections, Joaquim chose to utilize hypnotic looping, which he does with definite class and balance, protracting the mesmerism until it’s strictly necessary and never abandoning the music to a total dearth of structural development. Leaving certain cosmetic factors visible, but still keeping control on the depth of his statement, the Portuguese composer has created a milieu for fluctuating between nerve-balming meditation and the urgency of restoring a measure of normality in a gradually dissolving system of communication.