Silent Vigils: Fieldem
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Working under the Silent Vigils name, first-time collaborators Stijn Hüwels and James Murray describe their nascent project as “revolving around our shared love of the minimal, the graceful, and the understated.” While it might appear reductive to emphasize those qualities in particular, there is a real sense in which said terms do capture the essence of the material presented. On Fieldem, the two clearly deploy gestures and techniques associated with electronic minimalism, and the album's four settings exemplify both gracefulness and nuance in their design and effect—ambient productions of high craft and refinement, in other words.

The UK-based Murray's, of course, a well-known quantity in these parts, the Slowcraft showrunner's minimal electronic releases having received coverage at textura for many years now; a natural partner for the esteemed ambient practitioner is Belgian musician and Slaapwel label curator Hüwels, who uses processed guitar, loops, and field recordings to generate his productions. If the group name's in part a misnomer—the material, while reserved, is obviously not silent—the ‘vigil' notion definitely applies: whether the term is interpreted to mean remaining awake to keep watch through the night or conceived in its more religious sense as an occasion for prayerful observance, the music manifests a reflective, contemplative character that suggests devotion. Imaginary locales are intimated by the track titles, which is again fitting to the degree that the material transports the listener to realms of an abstract inner kind as opposed to ones demarcated physically.

Slow-burning guitar smolder and synthetic tendrils stretch in seemingly never-ending manner in “Molenbrook,” the first of four settings ranging between eight to thirteen minutes. Guitar shadings and electronics drift at the level of a whisper during the shimmering “Mossigwell,” a deep, drifting dronescape whose layers of warbly tremolo and e-bow-styled effects point the material in a Fripp-Eno direction without venturing so close the track loses its identity as a Silent Vigils production. In “Zwartewall,” a granular mass crackles alongside plangent guitar phrases, the result an unusual melding of austere industrial and warm analog textures. The most serenading of the four is the title track, whose gently glowing eddies placidly swirl for thirteen absorbing minutes, the track's hymnal effect bolstered by the organ-like gleam of its tones. As the piece progresses into its closing minutes, it grows even more celestial when the sound design takes on a gauzy character that suggests the music's severed any and all ties to terra firma.

August 2018