Serpente is Portuguese electronic artist Bruno Silva, and it’s really quite unique. There’s a really strange feel to the way he constructs beats. It’s like he’s more interested in the texture of the beat and the pattern than any notions of rhythm or momentum. Often there’s a repetitive pattern occurring but for the life of you it’s almost impossible to work out its cadence – or even work out how to nod your head. At times it feels like the beats are multiplying of their own accord like they’re some kind of living organism, and at other times it could be a Japanese water garden trying to get funky – and failing. It doesn’t feel like Silva is purposely trying to be odd or confusing, rather this is the way he understands percussion. It’s so refreshingly different. This is a field recording of a beat maker in the wild. Or perhaps a wild beat maker.
Often alongside the beats there are strange difficult to identify fragments of sound, odd audio collages that never totally step into the light and identify themselves. So between these two elements things get pretty far out. There really is no precedent to these peculiar malformed rhythmic monstrosities. Is it beat orientated sound art? Experimental beat juggling? Instrumental hip hop for those who choose not to flow? It is strangely hypnotic and endlessly compelling. It exists on the fringes of forms that we know yet its intentions are far different. It’s bold, weird and mystifying. Perhaps it’s the future.
