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SIMONEL

Cartographies of Silence

RELEASE DATE: JUNE 27, 2025 on all digital listening platforms

In a world saturated with noise, Mexican artist Simonel explores the profound beauty and intricate landscapes found within silence. Cartographies of Silence is an invitation to a sonic cartography of the inner world, a journey guided by the subtle language of ambient, drone, and experimental sound.

These sonic maps are drawn with warm, distorted textures, punctuated by the delicate hiss of magnetic fields and the cyclical embrace of tapeloops. Crafted through intuitive improvisation, each track is a testament to the power of feeling, weaving threads of warmth.

Inspired by the vastness of nature and the introspective rhythm of urban life in Tijuana, Cartographies of Silence utilizes analog heart—samplers, analog and digital synths, field recordings and tapes; recorded with the intimate warmth of four tracks and the spaciousness of stereo.

Cartographies of Silence is an intentional space. A place to listen deeply, to contemplate, and to discover the resonant beauty held within the quiet corners of our experience.

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This is Simonel’s second release for LINE. His previous album ‘Colmena’ (LINE_146) was issued in 2023.

RIYL: William Basinski, Koray Kantarcioğlu, Savvas Metaxas, Caretaker, Pinkcourtesyphone

Bandcamp Apple Music TIDAL Reviews
Catalog:
LINE_164
Format:
digital
Edition:
open edition
Release:
June 2025
Tracklist:

Drowned Tape Loop (03:05)
Hidden Path (04:32)
Memory of a Piano (04:27)
Whisper of a Mountain (07:41)
Frozen Lake (06:06)
The Fizzing Drone of a Streetlight (03:07)
Fourtrack Tape Experiment (05:00)
Synthesis of Warm Memories (04:02)
Overwhelmed by Heaviness (07:04)

Produced, Written & Performed by: Simonel
Co-produced, Mixed & Mastered by: Javier Cortez, Tijuana, Mexico

Simonel is the alias of Joan Obed Márquez, a Mexican-born musician who explores and experiments with his arsenal of tape decks to create analog atmospheres and drones that collide in slow motion with synths, tapelooping and field recordings. He creates magnetic worlds full of emotions and contemplation mood that repeat and expand with every listen. Simonel walks the breach between high and low fidelity.

His works have been released on Facade Electronics (MX), LINE (US), and Discos Deleite (MX).

instagram: @si.mo.nel

REVIEWS OF
Cartographies of Silence

  • Simonel doesn’t play music. He exhales it.

    In Cartographies of Silence, his second release for Richard Chartier’s LINE imprint, the Mexican tape-wrangler otherwise known as Joan Obed Márquez doesn’t offer a narrative, a theme, or even much of a pulse. What he does offer is a set of immaculately corroded inner landscapes—places where memory warps like magnetic tape left too long in the sun, and time folds gently in on itself like a crumpled, softly glowing map you forgot you were drawing.

    This isn’t ambient music in the background-scented-candle sense. It’s ambient as in amniotic, ambient as in the quiet hum of thinking too hard while staring at your childhood bedroom ceiling. Every piece here feels like it was rescued from some dusty drawer inside the psyche—faint, half-lucid field recordings of the soul at rest or maybe just catching its breath.

    From the opener, “Drowned Tape Loop”, we’re submerged in a world where analog hiss becomes a kind of narrator. There are no sharp turns here—no choruses, no climaxes—just shifting textures, trembling overtones, and an intimacy that often feels like eavesdropping on the silence between thoughts. It’s music that disappears into your bones if you let it. And you should.

    Each title acts like a compass rose on an emotional map—”Hidden Path”, “Frozen Lake”, “Memory of a Piano”. You get the sense that these aren’t just metaphors but literal sonic snapshots, impressions gathered in solitude from Tijuana alleyways, foggy dawns, and echo-chambers disguised as bedrooms. “The Fizzing Drone of a Streetlight” is exactly that: urban ambient noir with its hair slightly static-charged, a soundtrack for walking home too late under the sodium glow of existential doubt. It’s beautiful. And just a little spooky.

    What Simonel has done here is remind us that silence isn’t the absence of sound, but a terrain of its own – uneven, cavernous, warm in spots and chilling in others. His weapons of choice—four-track tape machines, field recordings, wounded synthesizers—are deployed like brushes rather than tools. The fidelity fluctuates between cloudy and radiant, like peering into a dream through a scratched windowpane.
    On “Overwhelmed by Heaviness”, the closing track, he doesn’t go out with a bang but with a long, slow sigh that lingers in the room like a memory you didn’t realize you were holding onto.

    Simonel walks the tightrope between signal and decay, control and surrender, clarity and fog. This release isn’t for casual background streaming or playlist-padding. It demands presence, not attention. It’s a collection of quiet places for those who can still find beauty in the in-between spaces – between words, between events, between selves.
    —chaindlk.com

  • Dazu passen dann recht gut die Cartographies of Silence (Line) von SIMONEL. Im Grunde sagt der Name des ersten Stücks schon alles: “Droned Tapeloops”. Beeindruckend auch “Memory Of A Piano”, was nämlich genau das ist – die ausgewaschene Erinnerung an einen KlavierKlang, der im dumpfen Rauschen (s)einen Weg durch die Störfrequenzen sucht. Überhaupt zeichnen die Titelbezeichnungen des Mexikaners die besten Bilder: “Frozen Lake” – ihr wisst sofort, wie das in diesem Zusammenhang klingen könnte. Natürlich ist das nicht wirklich gute Unterhaltung, aber eine perfekte MeditationsKulisse. Ganz hervorragende tape-experiment-dark-ambient-drone-lofi-art! 5/5
    —westzeit.de