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((Witxes)): A Fabric Of Beliefs

  Tobias Fischer

((Witxes)) don't subscribe to the simplistic definition of ambient as piling one layer of sound on another. Rather, Maxime Vavasseur's project marks a close union between the electronic and the acoustic, between atmospheric arrangements and occasionally propulsive rhythms – although the latter are rarely based on percussion instruments as such, but rather on a pulse in some other musical element. 

Unsurprisingly, then, by putting these contrasts to great effect, A Fabric of Beliefs never once allows the listener to get overly comfortable in one spot. Gradually, it guides its audience towards improbable places, to dark-jazzy pieces heavily drenched in electronics, to field recordings which feel like  carefully crafted compositions, to mere fragments of post rock nonetheless marked by a clear tension arch and consistent mood. While this may sound like a wildly eclectic blend on paper, things are always perfectly natural and convincing in practise. In fact, it would take an analytical mindset to notice these seeming paradoxes at all. The more the album progresses, the more the polarities are growing together to a degree that they're becoming inseparable; both turning into fundamental pillars and back ground textures at the same time.

((Witxes)) are organising these parts with absolute clarity, with an aesthetic which always awards a higher importance to the sum than to its constituent ideas and instrumental voices. Penultimate piece "The Words" is even an acoustic guitar song with vocals and closer "The Moonlit Passage", manages to both sustain this mood while taking it to another sonic plain altogether. If it all seems perfectly in place here, then that's because defying predictability and confounding expectations is the only definition of ambient A Fabric of Beliefs would ever subscribe to.

By Hellmut Neidhardt
Translation by Tobias Fischer

Homepage: ((Witxes))
Homepage: Denovali Records