heitor alvelos: faith

Faith is the first full-length sound release by media researcher and curator Heitor Alvelos under his own name. Heitor Alvelos has been a long-time on/off collaborator of Touch, having on occasion provided photography and stage visuals for Biosphere, Fennesz, BJNilsen, Rafael Toral, and Philip Jeck, as well as releasing sound pieces under the aliases Autodigest, Antifluffy, and Before Surgery, on Ash International, TouchRadio, and The Tapeworm. "The essence of the present piece is autobiographical: therefore the use of my own name," the author clarifies. "And yet it aims at being resonant to others": in this context, resonance may be regarded as both semantic and visceral, as the sound frequencies on Faith are often of the kind that "rearrange one's organs," to quote the recently departed Bernadette Martou. A necessity in order to carry the gravitas inherent to the subject, a confessional confrontation with the zeitgeist. All sources have been gathered, recorded, and produced throughout five decades, all the way back to a 1972 recording by Francisco Alvelos that closes the release. Elsewhere, sounds have been processed to various degrees, the bookends retaining their original contexts, others mutating into deep abstraction. Overall, they flow as one single composition, evocative and foreboding in equal measures.