“Flow” reviewed by monochrom.at

Calling a record of electronic music “flow” and then basically working on disrupting the flow is a daring act, but one that sets free thought and emotion and leaves a lot open for interpretation. Or, to start at the beginning, of definition: for what exactly is meant by “flow”? The word is regularly used in a variety of different meanings, from ebb and tide to vienna coffee house electronica to even the distorted pounding of Schranz. Postrockers tend to flow but the same was said in musical history about fusion jazz and, behold!, New Age synthie shit. Do Slayer have a flow? What about Aphex Twin? To use a common denominator definition, flow would be the same as pulse but in a longer span of time, ie. if you stretch the pulse of a piece of electronic music in time it would be that zone of dynamic tension before it turns into a drone. Which, of course, is just as bad a definition as any, but that is the way they have to be: misleading, self-contradictory and with little to no ability to express what they mean. Just like the music they come from.

To Joaquim the flow is defined by the moment. At least he references to the idea of a “moment” in all the track titles on this album. From “Moments of your time” via “moments of sync” to “empty moments” and “misleading moments”. He stretches, cuts and loops recordings of sounds, guitars and especially a female voice repeatedly speaking about her fears of intimacy and at the same time the loss of intimacy. Then he makes them akward, disrupts their organical flow by introducing new sounds or layers or stopping some abruptly. He uses noise and clicks to enforce the haphazard stumble through delicate beats and sounds. After all, the production is suberb and most bits and parts lay bare in crystal clear sound, ready to be dissected or digested. The pounding bass-rhythm formed from simple clicks but mixed into big proportions during “moments of silence” (track six) is a great way to show the abilities of Joaquim. To make things even more complicated, various parts, once again especially that female voice, repeat over and over again during the course of the record, in more and differently manipulated ways. So the listener has no option but try to swallow the whole thing as a whole. And to make that even more complicated, the label has added a video called “flow” (what else?) onto the disc.

The most interesting and most wondefully fascinating thing about communication is the fact that it works some times. From the simple task of a worldwide network of digitalized exchange of newsbits to the endlessly complex interconnections of communication in a human partnership, communications works. If you think about all the factors that may interfere, for instance starting from the very basic sender – reciever moder, you may start to doubt that communication is possible at all. If you then add the necessities and intermitting factors of the medium in all its variety and the history of communication between sender and reciever, you have taken the problem areas to manifold. And we haven’t even mentioned the black box of intermitting factors that come from outside our neat little modell. And within all those myriards of tiny little noise bits that turn into information when sorted in the right order, what place does electronic music inhabit? Well, records like “flow” seem to prove that within that vast universe of flickering tiny bits and bytes – or the hills and valleys of analogue transmission, if you insist –there are some places where the disturbance is bigger, because these records function like a black hole for infobits. So their place is to make the listeners more alert, sharpen their wits and enlight them.

Especially when he starts to emulate this gravitating and gyrating of info noise in a syrupy mass that we call the information age, in a dense and growing piece of static noise, modulated frequencies, warbling and stumbling beats, sharp high frequencies and a lot of other things that sound fierce and unfriendly when written down but form a big piece of music that feels good to the touch. “Silence … I still here you” repeats the female voice over and over again somewhere during the last third of “flow”. Yes, there is a lot of silence in these recordings, but unlike other records, the silence doesn’t come after the music is over, but is there visible and tangible while the music is still on.