Simulaciones

Juan Cristóbal Saavedra aka Equipo has his own particular perception of music: abstract and specific at the same time he creates a combination of house, techno, electronica, dub, minimal and IDM that display playful rhythmic patterns, subtle melodies and evocative harmonies. "Nighttime. I am driving. My passenger puts on some music. We travel on secondary roads in a central European country: dense forests, traffic is scarce, no conversation. The music invades the space. It takes on a celebration of life that is typical of electronic music. But it isn't, it is denser and resists the usual classification of style. The music seems close to post-industrial spheres but shows no trace of noisy machines operating behind its sonic surface. Free of excessive energies and ambiguous origins, the sound carries me to the frontiers that separate the known from the abyss. It is a pleasant feeling, like touching a scab without the bleeding. It requires my attention and I resist giving in to any seductively persistent booming. A perfect simulation of its source, it has lost all reference and taken on its own, separate reality. There is no longer a distinction between the extremes: dance and ambient, analog and digital. It is of pure manipulation, a perfect entanglement of what is active and passive, as Baudrillard would have said it. Pure pleasure. I keep driving, but I feel the passing of the landscape below our feet as if the car has seized to carry us and am at the wheel of a simulator. I turn to my passenger and ask by whom this music is. "It's mine," he says, "it's my latest CD." I recognise falling into the trap. We all do."