|
By:
Neural ||
Ether Real || Touching
Extremes ||
Musical Coma ||
Luna Kafé ||
Bodyspace ||
Cyclic Defrost ||
IRM Indie Rock
Magazine ||
CHAIN DLK ||
Dagheisha ||
IRM
Indie Rock Magazine ||
Vital
Weekly ||
A Trompa ||
Flur
|
Filament
|
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released on:
http://kvitnu.com (info
here)
buy/shop on Bandcamp:
https://vitorjoaquim.bandcamp.com/album/filament
interview on BODYSPACE about Filament (portuguese) here
pictures
+ video
from Filament concert on 5th Kvitnu Fest in Kyiv, Ukrain
here
pictures
+ video
from Filament concert on SEMIBREE Festival, Braga, Portugal
here
* nominated for QWARTZ ELECTRONIC MUSIC
AWARDS 2013 in the category Experimentation
Qwartz
*
one of the best drone/ambient albums
of the year 2011
IRM - Indie Rock Magazine
All texts integrally
reproduced
"Here
the sequences impress themselves in an iterated,
hybrid union of melodious envelopes and synthetic
drones; ambient interlacing characterized by very
dilated and hypnotic knits. A sense of suspension
fills the entire project. "Our everyday life seems
to be always more polluted by messages of every kind",
says the author Vitor Joaquim "and what is not
intense and sharp has no effectiveness". The energy
of this work is generated through a sensitivity to
microvariations and soft breathes, ravenous,
restless mutterings and the gnawing, elliptical
modulations of the scans that are modeled through
many evolutions of an immanent sonification. As the
electric current crosses the air, the tension of
brutally intense moments fills the narrative space.
It seems unnatural, then, to escape from the
continuum of a constantly active perception,
according to what is more conventional or appears as
the current object of devotion. Effectively marking
nonlinear spaces fraught with auditive winces and
characterized by many shades and urges, "Filament"
stands out for its sophisticated and restless
experimental nature. In the very rarefied
predisposition of the elements, intense and ghostly,
the auditive microemergencies and the recurring
successions are well integrated, with abstractions
seemingly generated from thin mechanical
disturbances. "'We still have our hearts to feel
what beat is, and what beat means. We don't need to
push ourselves to the edge of ourselves at every
moment."
> Aurelio
Cianciotta
>
Neural June 19, 2012 (IT)
"Cela
fait quelques années que l’on suit le travail de
Vitor Joaquim, mais d’un peu trop loin, la faute
peut-être à des productions assez espacées.
D’origine portugaise, on le découvrait logiquement
en 2005 sur le label Cronica
Electronica chez qui il sortait le sublime
album Flow en
2006.
Surprise donc de le retrouver aujourd’hui sur le
label ukrainien Kvitnu chez qui il apporte une
tonalité nouvelle. En effet, Kvitnu est tout de même
connu pour ses sonorités arides, incisives et cette
nouvelle production du portugais est à rapprocher
d’une ambient feutrée, parsemée de sonorités
expérimentales, mystérieuses, tenant parfois du
glitch.
Vous n’y échapperez pas, difficile de parler d’un
disque Kvitnu sans s’arrêter sur le superbe
packaging, toujours designé par Zavoloka :
graphisme noir et blanc tout en courbes, effet
embossé sur quelques stries et impression argentée
font de cet objet un petit bijou.
Le disque se divise en 5 pistes oscillant entre 6 et
14mn, durées idéales pour se laisser perdre dans ces
dédales ambient. Nappes douces, feutrées,
chuintements, tonalités répétitives pour créer une
certaine addiction, frétillements arides de laptop
et autres clicks sont au programme de Filaments
and Voids. Notre morceau préféré restera
certainement Filaments and Walls qui débute
par un jeu de guitare fracturée, ponctué
d’infrabasses et de bribes vocales. Petit à petit
les éléments se mettent en place, des boucles se
forment et créent de subtiles mélodies tandis que
des souffles envoutants ne cessent de passer. Un
procédé que l’on retrouvera en partie sur les 13mn
de Filaments of Conformity.
Deux titres se distinguent un peu. Filament d’une
part, se révèle beaucoup plus abstrait, plus
ambient, marqué par de nombreux bruitages qui feront
penser à une nuit à la belle étoile sur des nappes
qui nous rappellent le Prophecy
Theme composé par Brian
Eno pour le film Dune. Filaments
of Devotion d’autre part que l’on rapprochera
de Fennesz avec
ses guitares recouvertes de grésillements, ponctuées
ici d’une rythmique lourde et lente et de laptops
syncopés.
Ambient et cotonneux, chuintant et grésillant, aride
par endroit, juste ce qu’il faut pour ajouter un
certain relief, ce nouvel album de Vitor Joaquim est
un gros coup de cœur !"
>
Fabrice ALLARD
>
Ether Real 15/08/2012
“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."
>
Massimo Ricci
>
Touching Extremes April 11, 2012
Kvitnu keeps on with
their quest putting out "high blood pressure music".
This time it's Portuguese ambient electronic artist
Vitor Joaquim and his album Filament.
Described by the label to be: '...a silent scream
against the massacre of intensity and constant pulse
coming from out of us.'
Vitor Joaquim's
Filament reached 9th place among Top ambient
albums of 2011 by French e-zine Indie Rock Mag, in
competition with artists such as Aidan Baker, Tim
Hecker, Sun Thief and Cindytalk, and beating Fennesz
+ Sakamoto. Filament, in five movements, is
music composed and performed by Vitor Joaquim. As
usual the delicious Kvitnu label artwork design is
done by Zavoloka. Must be one of the finest labels
around when it comes to CD design.
Vitor Joaquim states:
'Our daily life is being more and more polluted with
fast and short messages. What is not intense and
sharp has no effectiveness. The sense of belonging
and timeless breathe is more and more away from us.
We live in a world full of information and in risk
of permanent ignorance. We are not aloud to stay,
breath, and keep staying. We are constantly pushed
toward something. Whatever it is something vital for
us, or absolutely nonsense. It's a time where only
short sentences can be effective. It's the time of
buzzwords and sound bites. A time where's devotion
is being displaced from every gesture that we do.
All is reduced to a task, all must be easy and
logical. This is what Joaquim wants to fight, or
make a statement against. Filament is brutal,
hardcore ambient. It starts out with "Filament and
Voids" like being in the middle of a waste winter
desert, when all of a sudden the disturbance of
electric storms appear. One can hear (and almost see)
the passage of an electric current through the air
out of the speakers. The spooky atmosphere is
underlined by a deep bass punching your stomach. "Filament
and Walls" follows, and I see gigantic, empty
factory halls - wall-to-wall white-frozen with a
halo of steam. It's a brutally intense movement.
The title track is a
more careful composition, but the intensity of the
album's thread and theme is present. "Filament of
Conformity" and "Filament of Devotion" fill the rest
of the album, summing up Joaquim's view of the
modern world. This our modern, hectic society, with
no time to stop for a break/breath and summarize
before moving on in a hastily way. The closing track
is the most 'conventional' one.
The currents and
undercurrents of Filament are threatening and
fascinating to listen to. It's a massive piece (some
52 minutes long) of ambience for ears and body.
You'd better listen well prepared for entering a
sonic wasteland. It's not an easy journey. Like
Joaquim says: 'We still have our hearts to feel what
beat is, and what beat means. We don't need to push
ourselves to the edge of ourselves at every moment.
Time needs to recover he's (sic) own time.
Filament is my answer to that question. An
answer that is not linear, not sharp, not short, not
fast, not easy. An answer that is all the contrary,
having the ear and the listening as a corridor for a
better understanding of the world and ourselves.
Filament is complex, extended, nonlinear and
concentrated on the detail. Like life in itself...'
> Håvard Oppøyen
>
Luna Kafé 12/10/11 (NO)
+
>
Musical Coma
Explorador
electrónico português assina disco próprio
de um peixe dentro de água.
Filament é aquilo que
Vitor Joaquim confessou ser: um trabalho
urgente, fruto da ânsia de não produzir um disco
a solo há muito tempo. E apesar de ser um disco
feito com inquietação e desassossego, longe da
sua casa de sempre (a Crónica), Filament
é um disco pensado e reflectido, com uma
maturidade que está apenas ao alcance de quem
pensa a sua obra como um todo.
Vitor Joaquim foi forçado a emigrar. Encontrou a
sua nova casa na Ucrânia e, talvez inspirado
pelos ventos frios, desenhou cinco paisagens
gélidas; cinco filamentos ricos em fibra e
texturalmente complexos. Senão veja-se
“Filaments and Walls”, intensa erupção
electrónica de camadas densas de não-melodia,
redemoinho que convoca um estado quase
apocalíptico onde restam apenas as máquinas; ou
o pára-arranca cromático de “Filaments of
Devotion”.
É lugar-comum dizê-lo mas é verdade. Este é um
disco que prova um contínuo amadurecimento, de
alguém que se sente cada vez melhor no seu corpo
e sabe que não precisa de fazer cedências no seu
trabalho; um disco que encontra Vitor Joaquim
num belo momento de forma. Em dias conturbados
como estes, Filament funciona como um
escape em cinco andamentos.
>
André Gomes
>
Bodyspace 01.02.2012 (PT)
Vitor Joaquim
has been a prolific and esteemed producer since the
nineties and is considered one of Portugal’s finest
electronic artists, and his latest for the Ukrainian
Kvitnu label will only further his reputation. As
the title implies Filament works in precise
digital shards, familiar from the post clicks n’
cuts language of Raster Noton, 12k and so on. Where
Joaquim distinguishes himself is in the vague
industrial murkiness covering these details, like a
layer of grey soot deposited on each tone,
everything lightly charred and blackened.
Hence it’s a much bleaker offering than that of his
contemporaries, a post-apocalyptic vision of laptop
production, revealing the promises left unfulfilled
by technological advancement. The title work is
emblematic of this vision, a slow-moving smeared
backdrop comprised of choppy choral drones and
digital insectoid chatter, all downcast and sad.
‘Filaments and Walls’ employs bolder gestures, faint
guitar tones flickering beside a messy scatter of
white noise chunks and bursts of fizz, cinematic
like Klimek. ‘Filaments of Devotion’ combines Tim
Hecker-esque feedback with cavernous sub-bass
whoomps, a suitably gothic finale to such a
convincingly pessimistic document.
>
Joshua Meggitt
>
Cyclic Defrost 5.12.2011
(AU)
"
2011, derniers regards en
arrière : 11 albums drone/ambient
A l’heure de tirer les bilans de ce cru annuel
particulièrement fourni, plusieurs solutions s’offraient
à moi : vous dévoiler mes 1428,57 disques favoris de
2011 et leur évolution en spirale logarithmique
tendant vers un nombre ’x’ = infini d’abstractions
métaphysiques, ou choisir tout simplement de parler
à la première personne pour vous présenter à
intervalles tout sauf réguliers mes coups de cœur de
l’année par catégories arbitraires, au jour le jour,
à l’instant ’t’ et selon mon impulsion du moment.
Vous l’aurez compris, l’exercice compulsif
éminemment rigide et bien souvent abstrait même pour
le lecteur averti s’est donc trouvé relégué
côté forum, mais en contrepartie c’est par l’ambient
sous toutes ses formes que débutera cette série de
regards en arrière, un passage obligé depuis l’avènement
de Bandcamp en l’an 10 du règne d’Aidan Baker Le
Grand.
(...)
9.
Vitor Joaquim -
Filament
Du post-rock à la
chillwave en passant par l’IDM, le Portugal nous
aura révélé cet année un vivier de talents
insoupçonnés. J’aurais ainsi pu vous reparler de
Leonardo Rosado
- mentionné parmi les dauphins de ce classement
malheureusement bien trop restreint - et de
son ambient évanescente et fragile associée
désormais à la voix de
Birds Of Passage,
mais ç’aurait été sans compter sur ma fâcheuse
tendance à céder au côté obscur, une faiblesse que
sont venues nourrir les nappes instables de
Vitor Joaquim
dont le dark ambient infrasonique zébré de glitchs
fugaces et dissonants porte à la perfection son nom
de
Filament.
L’une des plus belles réussites du label Kvitnu
cette année, parmi d’autres sur lesquels j’aurai
bientôt l’occasion de m’étendre dans une prochaine
sélection consacrée aux musiques électroniques.
>
RabbitInYourHeadlights
>
IRM
Indie Rock Magazine
06.12.2011 (FR)
"Both
astrophiles' and philosophers' imagination could be
immediately spurred by this release signed by the
talented Portuguese composer Vitor Joaquim and
issued by Kvitnu, an Ukranian label, which has
recently focused on the Portuguese
electronics.Vitor's not really a newcomer as he
performs since the late 80ies, an experience
confirmed by a weighty curriculum, full of important
collaborations such as the ones with Scanner,
Colleen, Phil Niblock, o.blaat, Ran Slavin and many
others, and releases such as Flow, considered as one
of the best electronic record of 2006, and Tales
from Chaos under the moniker Free Field, whose
musical stature deserved the inclusin amidst the ten
best record of the Portuguese electronic music scene.
As a matter of fact the first two tracks, "Filaments
and Void" and "Filaments and Walls", could refer to
some "spiritual" nourishments for many astronomers
and not only for their titles - voids are those
empty spaces between filaments, arguably formed by
baryon acoustic oscillations (it's undeniable the
fascination surrounding the idea of a sonic wave on
the basis of the creation!), while wall is a
different way of naming galaxy filaments, the
largest known structures in the universe -, but also
for their sound, where some sound tricks close to
the improvisational scene such as the usage of
connections in order to "burn" frequencies
intertwined with cinematic transitional effects (such
as over-delayed subtones, explosions and hypnotical
drones) are going to launch the listener into
sidereal spaces. To be honest, the conceptual
framework implied by Vitor's reasoning in order to
decipher this release seems more referred to
cognitive sciences as filament sounds like artist's
answer informational voids, created by a plenty of
fast, short and shallow messages filling our daily
lives, where such a lack in consistency seems to
suck away and soak up all the real contents of
life's moments, an emotionless uniformity reducing
everything to a task or to an act of devotion to the
cold perfection of formal logic. The third track,
Filament, could be thought as the gradual
strengthening of that silent scream against what
Vitor describes as "a massacre of intensity and
constant pulse coming from out of us", "an answer
that is not linear, not sharp, not fast, not easy",
a sort of rocketship which he makes travel to
explore conformity and devotion in the fourth (such
a lovely piece of minimal dark ambient close to some
electronic buzzing by Benge or Monoceros) and fifth
(my favorite one whereas such an SOS distress signal
seems to get gradually more and more concrete) track.
Really seducing stuff! "
>
Vito
Camarretta (id#6699)
>
CHAIN D.L.K.
L'interesse della Kvitnu nei
confronti della scena elettronica sperimentale
portoghese non è motivato solamente dal talento
degli Sturqen ma anche dagli scabrosi filamenti
digitali di questo artista che ha iniziato il suo
tortuoso percorso nei meandri della dance
contemporanea verso la fine degli anni ottanta. Le
collaborazioni con Vera Mantero, Paulo Ribeiro e Rui
Horta hanno arricchito un curriculum ricco di lavori
per il teatro e installazioni video. 'Tales From
Chaos' – pubblicato come Free Field – venne
considerato come uno dei dieci dischi di elettronica
più belli della scena locale mentre 'Flow', vecchio
di cinque anni ma ancora tremendamente attuale, ha
ottenuto riconoscimenti importanti a livello
internazionale. Adesso i filamenti di Vitor Joaquim
si liberano in un mondo stracolmo di informazioni
inutili nel quale regna l'ignoranza assoluta. Sono
complessi, estesi, non lineari e focalizzati sui
dettagli. Una risposta alle questioni spazio
temporali che affliggono la nostra esistenza.
'Filaments And Walls' e 'Filaments Of Conformity'
rappresentano due visioni complementari della
medesima problematica e la curiosità di possedere
ulteriore materiale di questo manipolatore del
domani è irresistibile.
>
Lorenzo Becciani
>
Dagheisha
08/11/2011 (IT)
"Le
streaming du jour #191 : Vitor Joaquim - ’Filament’
& Sturqen - ’Praga’
Deux visions
radicales de la musique électronique moderne et deux
preuves supplémentaires que le Portugal rayonne en
cette année 2011
(...)
Quant à
Vitor Joaquim,
professeur et chercheur à Porto toujours dans le
domaine, évidemment, des musiques créées sur
ordinateur, fondateur du festival EME consacré aux
arts d’avant-garde, compositeur et improvisateur de
bandes-sons pour diverses créations audiovisuelles,
performances ou installations, c’est un "vieux"
routard du label électro portugais Crónica, que
personne ne connaît malheureusement malgré le
plébiscite en 2006 de son album
Flow par
tout un pan éclairé de la presse spécialisé. Et là
vous vous dites : ça doit être bien chiant. Eh bien
pas du tout. Car loin de nourrir une ambition "savante",
la musique de
Joaquim s’aventure plutôt du côté du
dark-ambient synthétique qu’on aime, celui, spectral
et inquiétant, de
Deathprod ou de
Pan Sonic,
tout en tirant le meilleur des leçons d’architecture
dynamique sur zone sismique d’un
Tim Hecker
ou des édifices à ciel ouvert d’un
Jacaszek
pour nous proposer ce qui se fait de plus captivant
en la matière."
>
RabbitInYourHeadlights
>
IRM
Indie Rock Magazine
25.10.2011
(FR)
"Maybe the world of Vital Weekly, Portuguese
composer and improviser Vitor Joaquim is perhaps
best known as one half of the duo @C, but having
also worked with Scanner, Stephan Mathieu, Phill
Niblock, Ran Slavin and O.Blaat. His new album we
must see as a work against our daily life, in which
everything seems to fast and short. Short sentences,
lots of information, you know the drill, I gather.
Maybe its just some intelligent coup by Joaquim to
explain the more ambient nature of his work. Five
extended pieces of music, slow music actually.
Joaquim is a man to use computer, software, plug ins
and all of that to create a fine work. Its, as with
most of his work, somewhere between composition and
improvisation. My guess is that he does long
sessions where he toys around with electro-acoustic
sounds, field recordings perhaps but also recordings
of acoustic object and such like, and then takes
these sessions as building blocks for a composition.
All is quite digital here, with a vague notion of
rhythm in such pieces as 'Filaments Of Conformity'
and 'Filaments Of Devotion', slowly bouncing, like
an electro-acoustic version of dub music. The
slowness of the music is quite nice on this sunday
afternoon - sun shining, but cold, inside with a
nice book. Not perhaps his best work, I think, and
maybe all just a bit too digital, but actually quite
alright." (FdW)
> FdW
>
Vital Weekly
(NL)
"Mais um trabalho interessante de um dos nomes
maiores da cena electrónica experimental lusa."
> Rui Dinis
>
A Trompa (PT)
"Podemos
estar mais habituados a ouvir Vitor Joaquim em cima
de um palco, mas uma visita à discografia do seu
site revela para os mais distraídos uma extensa
colecção de obras que traçam um dos mais coerentes
corpos de trabalho portugueses em torno da
electrónica, bem como um nome recorrente em muitas
compilações do género. Quase sempre ligado
emocionalmente ao ambientalismo, "Filament" pode
encaixar nesse estado de espírito - ou induzi-lo -,
dando-nos cinco longos temas onde viajamos por entre
estruturas artificiais que nos lembram cenários
reais - este jogo duplo tem sido, aliás, uma das
suas mais ricas gramáticas desde a estreia
fulgurante com "Tales From Chaos" em 1997. É sempre
injusto invocar outros músicos para comparações, mas
a verdade é que "Filament" não parece dever nada à
riqueza que costuma sair das mãos de Fennesz ou
Biosphere."
>
>
FLUR
|
mailing LUST #669 | 21 outubro 2011
(PT)
|