Vitor Joaquim – Impermanence

vitor-joaquim-impermanence

Vitor Joaquim – Impermanence

A feeling of anxiety immediately takes us when listening to “Here and Now”, the first track of the last release by Vitor Joaquim, a sound artist we remember especially for his works produced by Knivitu, Feld and Crónica Electronica. In the last years many changes took place in the arts, in society and in daily life, without even considering the geopolitical events that nobody could have predicted. But Joaquim seems to focus his analysis on a different level of mutation, which is more intimate but at the same time still primary and reactive. The declarations about the project and the album’s sounds actually show an open change compared to past works. The settings become more dark and introverted, but the quality is still significant, thanks to the balance of sound waves, the effects of the vocal parts and the hypnotic combination of the iterated melodies. If the current events seem more predictable, the theme of decomposition is a new urge for the Portuguese experimenter, leading him to a scenario that is more rarefied than before. The impermanence is a framework, a context, one of the possible forms of the transience in the phenomena: in some passages the sound events seem to take some quietist shape, but eventually they always have an evolution, though sometimes unpredictable. The work presents some Eastern flavors and some space suggestions, and some vague dub influences that then change and become something else. However, we find again here an element characteristic of Joaquim style: the use of different vocal samples modified with electronics, a solution he has loved for a long time, when the caesura were more ambient. The focus on how the things evolve during the time is not lived passively. A proof of this is the accurate artwork, based on a Visacard USB-pen, made in white and transparent plastic, including a limited edition with acrylic sculptures by Gui Grazina. It is impossible not to mention that part of the lyrics are excerpts of an interview of Arvo Part, “Modern Minimalists, with Bjork”. Other samples come from a tape letter or from a female voice. The result is always wonderful and poetic, and so we can say this album is unmissable.

 

Vitor Joaquim – Impermanence