WITXES - A Fabric Of Beliefs

For three years now, Maxime Vavasseur has been delighting the palates of atmospheric electronic music lovers in search of new flavors and the most disparate sonic combinations. That could sum up the work of Witxes, a project that, in truth, hasn't received much attention from specialist critics, and which has spread across three LPs - this latest one included - a series of explorations with a thousand faces and countless possible scenarios. While the self-produced "Scrawls #1" seemed to project him into the territory of a vivid, shimmering ambient, the following "Sorcery/Geography" already began wrapping that world in a mix of cinematic settings and electro-acoustic effusions.

"A Fabric Of Beliefs" marks Vavasseur's arrival on the Denovali roster, which is living through one of its most prolific and surprise-filled years in 2013, with a cascade of excellent titles concentrated in the last few months, and which has also recently reissued his previous album. This is also the album in which the Witxes brand reaches its peak, thanks to a now-mature sonic formula launched toward ever more uncontaminated worlds. This time we're faced with a sculpture that blends the most disparate styles and settings, keeping as its only trait d'union an extremely high dynamic tension and a tendency toward an almost cinematic evocation, as well as a certain darkness that pervades all the soundscapes. We're not far from the territory of a reinvigorated, darkened Jasper TX, nor - staying within the Denovali family - from that of the latest Terminal Sound System.

A full-fledged suite opens this sort of sonic monument: "Through Abraxas" weds the vibrating architectures of Tim Hecker in its first part, then explores lunar ground in the second and lets a guitar ring out in open space, before exploding into a tribal, unleashed post-rock in the epic crescendo of the third. This dizzying ouverture alone would be enough to convey the incredible variety of the album, but the Frenchman's palette expands without setting itself any limits: the pairing of "The Breach" and "The Visited" returns to wander the cosmos, this time aiming for the chiaroscuro of an electronic trip, while "The Turned" seeks and finds contact with the darkest side of Emeralds.

"The Strands" upends the scenery, abandoning electronics in favor of a chamber-music mix of guitars, piano and percussion, while "The Apparel" submerges into a ritual undergrowth and "The Weavers" amalgamates the harmonics of a treated guitar into dense mountains. Witxes shows the utmost courage, however, in the nocturnal "The Pilgrim", an immersion in a humus of field recordings, astral synth lines and percussion in odd time signatures framing Pierre-Loup Mollard's saxophone. The closing stretch is instead split between the singer-songwriter passage in pure drone-folk for voice and guitar of "The Word" and the cathartic release of the sweet "The Moonlit Passage".

And in the end, it's genuinely difficult to put a name to the hugely varied mixture the album presents. Its ability to range between different worlds without the slightest dip in quality, to naturally create a common thread running through them, to explore uncontaminated horizons with real personality, and to guide the listener on a genuine journey from the first to the last minute make this his most accomplished record, confirming the talent already glimpsed in his previous work. For Vavasseur and Witxes, this is a true consecration, the follow-up to which - already slated for next year - is now awaited with great interest.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

11/07/2013