Somewhere in Porto, Portugal — at the edge of blue earth, this ancient city perched on a river — Ivo Pacheco sits in a room, making songs. He makes “Tears,” and it sounds like tears. “Change and Love” like the terrifying uncertainty of both. He’s influenced by witch house but well beyond its borders; IVVVO is like Porto itself. Old, mysterious and entirely its own being.

It’s tough to know where to begin with IVVVO; for a producer so entwined in ghostly atmospheres, his catalogue is thicker than molasses. If you’re like me, you’ll start with the achingly dark ambience of “Tears” (by accident, via Don’t Die Wondering), then backward to the hypnotic I Just Love You EP on Terrain Ahead and the most recent For U single. That one, according to Pachenco, isn’t an actual release. It’s a gift for a girl. But if all the care and emotion in the world brought him to that place, the chilled and minimal beauty of it, it’s worth everyone’s attention. Pachenco’s best songs, after all, are his most intimate: The sinister syntax of witch house morphed into a more harmonic, moon-hued melancholy, all of it whispering directly in your ear. This is music made for basements and bedrooms. For crying and hating and falling in love, somewhere in the darkness of Porto, at the mouth of a cool, docile river.

Find IVVVO’s latest tracks and remixes — including a just-released collab with Palmistry — on Soundcloud and Bandcamp, and download several of his EPs directly from his website.

Change and love by IVVVO

for u by IVVVO

Please by IVVVO

- Rue Sauvage