Described as being “like Harold Budd and Oval playing in the same room,” WHΛLTHISИEY is the haunted ambient project of Fernando Cerqueira. Residing in Lisbon, Cerqueira is the co-founder of the Portuguese Thisco label and founding member of the late 80’s SPH Tapes label, whose releases include works by Merzbow and Jim O´Rourke.
Combining drone and minimalist glitch with impressionist piano atmospheres, WHΛLTHISИEY’s intimate music seeks to mix the past with the present, drawing beauty from the commonplace to give it life again via a mirror that absorbs and reflects. Everything flows, is constantly in flux in WHΛLTHISИEY’s music, always becoming but never being. As the artist themselves states: “WHΛLTHISИEY is repetition and out of repetition, comes variation, out of variation comes iteration, out of iteration, comes creation.”
Running just shy of three-minutes, ‘Chain fraction’ is a concise micro study in melancholic murmurs, one which rewards being played on an endless loop to welcome in the smeary-eyed dawn after a post-rave comedown. It is an ambient soundtrack for the lost and lonely souls walking around nameless labyrinthine streets at 3am with nowhere to go. WHΛLTHISИEY has magicked an illusory sense of place, one that is nowhere, somewhere off the map, desolate and crumbling – a liminal space where Basinski’s deteriorating tape loops reverberate around Burial’s foggy, barren wastelands. Chain fraction runs a sighing sonic bath that bubbles with a bittersweet tenderness.
As delicate piano fragments slow dance over a shimmering lake of chained digital pulses and hypnotic, swelling drones, the mood remains fragile and on the cusp of disintegration. Emotionally heavy, with a strong sense of loss, the track circles with a soothing yet sad déjà vu, reeling in waves of nostalgia where every iteration of the melodic refrain reveals a more powerful punch. The music is blissful and pure escapism, but it is blemished with the ringing thoughts that escape may not yet be possible – that, for now, we have to continue slow walking like living ghosts around the endless spirals of Borgean streets.
Across their sea of releases, WHΛLTHISИEY’s music remains touched by an emotional weight, an anxious calmness sailing across lulling dronescapes and drifting ambience, with some featuring spoken word samples which expands any imagined story vignettes. WHΛLTHISИEY has many releases to explore across labels which include ‘Shanthisdeva’ on Fallen Moon, ‘Thisowned’ (https://mahorka.bandcamp.com/album/thisowned) on Mahorka, and ‘Quiethism’ from Kahvi Collective.
Chain fraction appears on the MEANS compilation album Living Within Our Means Vol 1.
You can explore and support WHΛLTHISИEY’s music on Bandcamp, where you can find a wide range of solo and collaborative works, including ‘THING’, a split CD released through Attenuation Circuit with WHΛLTHISИEY, The Phlod-Nar, el_masmore, and Claus Poulsen.
https://walthisney.bandcamp.com
Website: https://walt-thisney.tumblr.com
Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/WalThisney
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whalthisney
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/walthisney
Ryan Hooper
MEANS 