XVII WROCŁAW INDUSTRIAL FESTIVAL

In 2001  Natasha (Natasha A Twenty One) and Alexey Protasov leave their hometown  Minsk and conquer the scene as Ambassador 21. Their message is as simple as the slogan fuck all systems. Their bearish, punk attitude made by A21 has roots in their adolescence spent in Minsk, where they both played in garage bands. The music of the Belorussian duo is usually described as digital hardcore or synthcore. However, it includes even more: from rhythm’n’noise, tech industrial to drill and noise. All this is served in lethal tempo and is intended for a strong stomp and dance. Putting it in a nutshell – enforced with a punk vibe, full of adrenaline, it is a mutation of many genres of contemporary, radical and club music. Relentless energy of Ambassador 21 works excellently live. Natasha and Aleksey do not spare themselves on stage, they lash everybody and everything with their unabashed spontaneity. They immediately became a favourite act of the festivals where rhythm and noise are well. Their expression perfectly corresponded with the aesthetics of such events as Maschinenfest, Elektroanschlag or Forms Of Hands. So far, Amabassador 21 is over a dozen of well-received albums and a range of collaborations, remixes, etc., work for artists from specialist labels, such as Hands, Ant-Zen, Out Of Line, Metropolis or Industrial Strength. Their new album, Human Rage,  like most of the previous recordings of A21, is marked by their own label, Invasion Wreck Chords. Their set at WIF 2018 is surely going to be the next avalanche of beat, noise and energy.

Contrary to the vast majority of WIF’s performers, Antlers Mulm’s music is expressed in non-offensive forms, served in almost friendly way. Antlers Mulm create music outside the limits of predictable compositions, with a beginning, development and ending. Atmospheric, spacial structures contain echoes of melodies. The rhythm is served in a structural, precise method. Intricately produced music of Antlers Mulm is at times (un)pop in its openness towards the listener. The project founded in 2003 by Hans Johm a.k.a. Mulm, was later supported by Stephan Spreer (fx, sampling) and Martin Rauch (vj). Antlers Mulm has recently been joined by two guitar players, Franz Schwarznau and Christopha Bley. Antlers Mulm’s music at WIF 2018 is going to evoke “interstellar drifting in a translucent space of the white cube”.

The unidentified group BöN avoid describing its music. The members’ compositions are meant to speak for themselves. Enigmatic half-information direct the audience to ambient, drone-like, shamanic, and meditative sounds, which”bridging the West with the East and the North with the South, set out their own ritualistic way in the music of the world”.

An absolute legend of the English punk scene, dark punk, industrial. It is enough to say that Crisis is the first-fruit of Death In June. Tony Wakeford and Douglas P. founded Crisis as a fighting power band, strictly connected with the anti-nazi movement, ant-National Front. In late 70s the founders of Crisis were fascinated by Trotskyism, anarchism, radical left-wing, critical of the Soviet Union. The theme of the committed songs was Great Britain of late 70s and early 80s, that time’s government, society, scene and anti-Nazism. Apart from their manifest-lyrics expressing controversial political affiliation, Crisis created primary punk rock, intentionally raw music, lacking quirkiness, with no pub rock or rhythm blues influences. The primary work of Crisis was full of passion and contained a ripping doze of energy. Their only album, Hymns Of Faith (1980), included all of the above.To define this ascetic formula, the journalists coined the phrase: music to march to. Crisis, just like all their following projects, did not accept political indifference. The title of the posthumous compilation album, We Are All Jews and Germans, wasn’t accidental. It reffered to the emblematic slogan from 1968 and it was a meaningful declaration. The titles of the tracks, for instance Kanada Kommando; Holocaust or Red Brigades predicted motifs developed later in the work of Death In June. Nowadays, the only depositary of Crisis is Tony Wakeford, best known from Sol Invictus. Besides Wakeford, the present members are the musicians known from i.a. Naevus or Alternative TV, they stay faithful to the original spirit of Crisis. Founded in 1977 and hibernated for decades, Crisis still proclaimes total resistance against today’s world. Who knows, maybe the old hymns are now more up-to-date than in the 70s?

Death Is The Most Certain Possibility – the début album by the duo Da-Sein, currently residing in Madrid, was released by Galakthorrö. All who appreciate the works of November Novelet or Haus Arafna will fancy their analogue darkwave-styled electronic music. As is the case with Haus Arafna, the offering of the Madrid based duo is an exposition of melancholy and the European malaise enriched with noise, the deep sounds of the semi-modular synthesizer Korn MS-20, and distorted beat.

Darkwoodis  is a Saxony based neo-folk group led by Henryk Vogel. Darkwood’s melodic music is a fusion of the sounds of classical instruments such as guitars (both acoustic and electric) and string instruments enriched by electronic backing.  The prowess of Darkwood makes it on par with the genre’s master such as Ostara or Blood Axis. The project’s poetics is encapsulated in its very name, and the albums’ titles carry equally clear messages: Flammenlieder; Ins Dunkle Land; Jugend und Heimat; Flammende Welt. Henryk Vogel’s lyrics touch on the subjects of love, war, and hate. However, what underlies Darkowood’s poetics is a memory – of a place, a spirit, history, or ancestors. The songs include references to the conflicts or tensions of our continent’s history. At the 17th WIF, the group is going to present a review of its eight studio albums and some new material to be released soon.

Doc Wör Mirran is a south Germany based multimedia group of artists active in all possible areas. Their every performance is a separate undertaking composed of specially prepared première pieces of music. It can be a concert at a club, an exhibition, happening, or a record release – and, sometimes, musical sabotage intruding on a street Stadtfest.
Bernard H. Worrick and Joseph B. Raimond met in mid 80’s in Nuremberg. The history of Doc Wör Mirran involves the project’s participation in the cassette culture of the 80’s and a number of releases in all possible formats. For a long time, the artists lived in the USA, where their single was released under the auspices of the punk magazine Forced Exposure (1991). Doc Wör Mirran’s art is noise, hum, sounds, sculptures, poetry, manifestos, visual art, music, literature, and action. The prevailing characteristics of the group’s output are the hilarious, the grotesque, and the absurd, a good testimony to which is the name of its own label – Undertainment. The Doc Wör Mirran project strives for a complete fulfilment of the Dada movement’s premiss. The artists’ motto is total artistic freedom.

Lee Howard from Birmingham, named his personal voice in the cacophony of today’s culture Iron Fist Of The Sun. His music is made in the city which has raised a few greatest classics of heavy  guitar music. However, Lee Howard uses a different means from Napalm Death or Godflesh. His  method of fighting his own demons, obsessions, is an expression called power electronics. Lee Howard batters diatribes of hate and stamps them with an explosion of stratified noise. IFOTS is a world-view vehicle, a manifestation, an individual gesture, as well as a way to express  unabashed hate against today’s England and United Kingdom. Nihilism, misantrophy and a total counterpunch against the contemporary world burst from every fragment of this music. Since the release of the debut cassette of IFOTS about 10 years ago, he has been publishing regular portion of his artwork. Most of the material is released under the long-serving label, Cold Spring.

Radical and confrontational industrial power electronics drawing inspiration from the genre’s classics, such as Fire in The Head, Control, Slogun, and Genocide Organ. An offensive of noise in its best guise, a well-polished and powerful sound, structured noise plus an adequate charge of emotional aggression. The project, originally from Łódź but based in the UK since 2012, is an execution of the requirement of day-to-day self-defence. The sonic assault serves the purpose of defence against the media, popular culture, lies on the Internet, and other threats of today’s world. Kevlar is an intrusive wall of sound and a demonstration of uncompromising power in times when weakness is considered the norm.

Kollaps spit blood on both the scared and the profane as the band remains tethered to the insanity that feeds the visceral nature of their now legendary and violent live performances. The band will be releasing a new album in early 2022, continuing their partnership with premier uk industrial label Cold Spring Records.

Deconstructed tissue, dirty electronics, overdriven vocals, and samples. Massiv Distorted System 51 is rhythm and noise united as one. Founded in 2007, the project comprises Enrico Straube and Mike Lutz, who invite other artists to take part in their projects.  The electronic industrial of MDS51 is a kind of music that is relevant to the time in which it comes into being. Massiv Distorted System 51 uses means that have been successfully tested in the industrial music scene. ”Enter this huge factory; let the noise of the machines and the hiss of the valves dictate the beat!It’ll guide you to places you know well” – suggest the artists.

The backbone of Meta Meat’s music is rhythm. Percussion instruments and a real beat of urban, ethnic, or tribal origin. The sound of drums and percussion against sampled backdrops. The group was set up by two musicians known from already renowned French projects: Somekilos (2Kilos &More) and Phil Von (Von Magnet). Meta Meat’s energetic performances turn into rituals of untamed rhythm. The raw tribal rhythm of Meta Meat touches the primal element. Enriched with electronic sounds and ethnic samples, the rhythms have a ritualistic dimension. Meta Meat is a cultural collision of many sources, one of which might even be Test Dept from the period of Totality and Tactics for Evolution. Their album entitled Metameat is an outcome of a collaboration of two labels – Ant-Zen and Audiotrauma.

Eric Van Wonterghem vel Monolith is not an anonymous person at WIF. The festival audience had many chances to find out about Eric’s expertise as an all-embracing artist and technician. When in 1997 he started his work under the name Monolith, he had already been a legendary figure of the European electro industrial scene. This pioneer of dark electronics began his musical adventure in dim and distant past of new beat and has still been present there for several decades! Eric Van Wonterghem is both the creator and the craftsman. It is by no means exaggeration to call him a mega-master of production, a mage of the recording studio. EVW’s methodology had great impact on the industrial-like movement, rhythm noise. Eric’s dynamic career was marked by his matchless consistence and carft, unlikely having any vulnerabilities. The result of his bona fide work can be heard on tens or even hundreds of albums of the electro industrial scene. Each product signed with his name has features of great precision and solidity. Classical names, such as Insekt, Sonar, Absolute Body Control or The Klinik speak for themselves. Recently, Eric has also been a successful producer of the new wave of club techno industrial. Monolith is not only a timeless hit song, Disco Buddha. The base of his practice is stated by repetitive loops and merciless rhythm, minimalism of the electronic beat interconnected with noise; enriched with some doze of groove, either. Monolith joins all these elements to create a coherent monolith, the music of body and spirit, intended for movement and dance.

Radical work of Margaret Chardiet strictly coincides with phases of her life. The artist treats sound integrated with her own body as a whole. To say that Pharmakon’s music is a wall of sound and that Margaret is a representative of New York ‘s industrial scene is not enough. Her three albums released by Sacred Bones proved that she had mastered something more than precision and advanced emploi of forging noise. Pharmakon demonstrates something new, something different than just manipulated voice and sound. Something that definitely doesn’t seem easy in the exploited area of dissected noise. Pharmakon is the music of self-therapy and…resistance, in the most literal sense, which reveals an inextricable bond with the author’s states. The leitmotive of her second album, Bestial Burden (2014), was a serious surgery and recovery. A part of the material was made on a hospital bed. Multilayer sound accumulation contains scream, groans, pain, and also totally unusual rhythms of choking, convulsion, breath catching… the most realistic recordings of the body system and its disfunction. The major incentive was resistance and a defense agains the internal antibody. Bestial Burden is an acute documentary of the pathology and the fight against it. Just like the album mentioned before, the other ones,  Abandon(2013) and Control (2017), also represent a similar type of interaction between the maker and the work. Pharmakon represents documents of personal confrontation, individual expression of sincerity, pain. Without any concessions to the listener’s comfort.

A power electronics assault on your senses. Anti-musical destructionism generated with own-produced tools and a heavily processed human voice. The methods are simple and radical, but performances by the duo Sznur, usually not exceeding twenty minutes, are amazingly powerful. A scrap of noise thrown in the audience’s faces.

The adaptation of Hans Holbein’s classic portrait of ambassadors featured on the cover of the album Nerissimoclearly indicates the niche in which the art of Teho Teardo and Blixa Bargeld should be sought. The artists’ creation is where history and the present meet, between tradition and avant-garde. The past is behind them, and avant-garde lies at their feet, symbolized by the tapestry with Jackson Pollock’s drip painting. Within their reach are tools, knowledge, and skills. The awareness of vanitasconcentrated in the middle of the original composition from 1533 also seems to be very important to the whole artistic work.
It’s a safe bet that the name Blixa Bargeld is known to everybody reading this brochure. After the years of Sturm und Drang, both Einstürzende Neubauten and its leader evolved towards forms of expression remote from the original concept. Blixa Bargeld has always emphasized that Neubauten music is much more than banging on sheet metal, the sound of drilling, and all those hardware features. This is why EN repertoire included pieces such as Lee Hazlewood’s Sand already a long time ago. For more than a dozen years now, Blixa Bargeld has been pursuing his own career as a reciter, poet, and performer, apart from his continuous creative activity with Einstürzende Neubauten. Mauro Teho Teardo has had equally reach creative experiences related to the aesthetic of post-punk and the industrial culture. As M.T.T., he cooperated with Nurse With Wound and Ramleh, created the group Meathead in early 90’s, and worked with the Italian outfit Pankow as well as the memorable Zeni Geva, Pain Teens, and Cop Shoot Cop.  Today, Mauro Teho Teardo is a recognized Italian composer, known for writing scores for films made by directors such as Paolo Sorrentino. The meeting the Berlin and Rome based artists brought excellent results that transcend their individual experiences. The fruit of the cooperation, which started in 2013 – the albums Still Smiling (2013), Spring(2014), Nerissimo (2016), and Fall (2017) captured the audiences’ hearts and were received with enthusiasm. It’s difficult to pigeonhole the music of Teho Teardo and Blixa Bargeld – it’s tonal, song-like, but at the same experimental and abounding with paradox. The intimist and quiet songs are largely a reflection of Blixa Bargeld’s personal evolution. What can be observed in the lyrics is a departure from defeatism and the urban nightmare. The focus on the artist’s self and an affirmation of little moments of joy – increasingly often appearing as the pivotal elements – are a complete antithesis of the tragedy and nihilism usually associated with Neubauten’s message. It’s worth stressing Teho Teardo’s mastery as a composer – his work on the project, slightly impregnated with a film score-like approach, has made it whole in musical terms. The catchy and cheerful melodies are crowned with sometimes very surprising endings. Blixa’s warm and low voice can suddenly become piercing, while the songs themselves can unexpectedly turn into dissonant grinding. The refined compositions are at the same time traditional, repetitive, and (sometimes) atonal.
During their performance at the Gothic Hall, the artists will be accompanied by Laura Bisceglla & Gabriele Coen and small ensemble comprisingBartosz Bober, Wojciech Bolsewicz,  Paweł Brzychcy, Sylwia Matuszyńska.

Dark grainy flashes, blurred vision, jerky montage, pictures torn to the edge of legibility, stroboscope, harsh texture, blinding gleams, desorienting flashes, devastation of goods, fragmentation of vision.  Violent videoclips of The Soft Moon perfectly correspond with the music. The man behind the name, Luis Vasquez, declared, that his solo project is, first of all, supposed to help him get to know himself. As he says, he makes music to face personality problems, for self-identification. Many musicians nowadays try to explicate their work this way. Even if The Soft Moon is an individual means of self-therapy, it contains something unachieved by others.
From the beginning it was clear that, despite the ostensible deja vu, we deal with something special here. The debut album released in 2010 foreshadowed the new attitude towards, presumably already exploited themes. Neo post punk The Soft Moon integrated many elements in its music, which work together as a magnet. Excellent motor skills, space, trance, electro beat, noise, shoegaze sounds, characteristic, nervous drive – are only a few to mention.  Besides, TSM’s music is perfectly catchy, feisty and…danceable. The next releases Zeros (2012); Deeper (2015) showed The Soft Moon as melancholic, thoughtful, yet still unusually vital. A poetics of TSM contains also a doze of aggression, self-destruction, negativity, mal de vie. The power of contradiction translates here into a language of brilliantly constructed songs with catchy melodies, dirt, noise. The Californian sound artist resides presently in Europie (currently Berlin), on his own he composes and produces his music. It seems that here he had found many of his inspirations. Continental dark wave, post punk, cold wave and industrial  – the historical but also the contemporary, had a positive impact on creating The Soft Moon.  You can hear it especially on the latest  album, Criminal, released for Sacred Bones.