XIII Wrocław Industrial Festival

2kilos & More is a French electronic duo started in 2003 by Séverine Krouch and Hugues Villette, known from Von Magnet project. Large number of references and styles appearing in their music makes it difficult to unequivocally classify their music into a particular genre – variations on ambient, industrial and noise are often accompanied by elements of other genres, such as minimal, post-rock, IDM, or even drum’n’bass. The group members base their music mainly on electronic sound, at the same time not being averse to the use of live instruments. By means of analogue and digital sounds and samples, the artists create their pieces improvising around evolving sound waves. It is a restless and complex music, sometimes filled with absolute intensity, boarding with psychosis. Such a combination of compositions saturated with atmospheric ambient and dark post-industrial sections, sharp noise and hypnotic rhythms makes many fans and critics consider their music as perfectly fitting the film universe of David Lynch.

During the concert in Wrocław, they will be joined on stage by Black Sifichi, a renowned American spoken-word artist, whose melodeclamation and vocals will accompany the group’s music.

Ab Intra is a Latin expression meaning ‘from within’ which makes a motto of a music project by Radek Kamiński, who attempts to explore inner mental spaces and present them through sound. Ambient and drone stylistics are merely keywords here, a point of departure for presentation of images manifested in the artist’s mind. His pieces are not about presenting particular meanings or reflections – it is rather an attempt at putting the consciousness in certain states by means of sound, without using any words or formalized music. It is more about conveying the spirit and atmosphere than concrete meanings. Although immersed in ambient aesthetics, this is not a simple, relaxing music – on the contrary, it is very demanding, requiring full concentration and stillness from the listeners. This is why the music is free from unnecessary sound interludes, incrustations or ornaments, there are no lyrics or clear symbols and metaphors – to grasp the clear aura of music and the emotions it brings. In compositions of Ab Intra silence plays as important role as the sound itself. It is an intimate and personal music – both for the artist himself and the listeners.

The project has played numerous concerts and apart from a few smaller records, has released two LPs on Polish label Zoharum. The concert in Wrocław will promote the latest record – a double spit with German drone-ambient 1000 schoen, also released by Zoharum.

Borghesia is a legendary music project formed in 1982 in Ljubljana by the members of the alternative theatre groupFV-112/15. The band, together with the group Laibach from the same city, are still considered as the most important representative of Slovenian independent and alternative art scene of the 1980s and are two music projects from former Yugoslavia to achieve world fame (they released four albums on prestigious label Play It Again Sam).

Their hypnotic pieces filled with samples from films and radio broadcasts combine different genres and styles – you can find here new wave, minimal wave, electro, synthpop, proto-techno and disco music. Many believe that Borghesia have created their own kind of EBM, based on symphonic sound of synthesizers, funky bass lines, minimalist rhythms and raw sequences of repeated, trance loops. The group’s work is often put on equal footing with such major names in the industrial dance scene as DAF, Manufacture or Front 242.

Apart from the music itself, what is equally important in case of Borghesia is the anti-authoritarian and anti-nationalistic iconography, visible in every aspect of the group’s activities – in the lyrics, album covers, video productions by the band’s members and at concerts. The primary subjects raised by the artists are surveillance, control, prohibition, sexual taboos and all other forms of oppression of an individual.

Working in many art disciplines, the artist Jana Komaritsa has been one of the central figures in Russian underground scene for years. Performing under the pseudonym DJ Jana Dark, she has become famous for lively sets, at which she skillfully presents diverse kinds of industrial and experimental electronics. Her experience on stage as a DJ has translated into her own art as well – she is responsible for a one-man multimedia project called Darkrad, which is a way to externalize her most deeply hidden feelings, emotions and thoughts. By the use of music, video, performance and all other available means, Jana Komaritsa creates dark, surrealistic worlds which can seduce with the richness of sensations. Darkrad is an exploration of these unknown and secret aspects of reality and human psyche which can scare you to death and at the same time are deeply fascinating and tempting. Silenced fear, emotional and physical pain, perverse sexuality, inner psychosis, metaphysics, contradictory emotions – these are the main subjects around which Jana’s work in Darkrad revolves.

Live shows of the project are emanations of sensations from the most hidden corners of subconsciousness – they do not let you suppress any emotions. The artist still seeks for new forms, through which she can express inconvenient and dark truths that are signals of everything we wish to silence inside us.

Düsseldorf is undoubtedly one of the pioneering projects in EBM stylistics in Poland. Started in 1989 in Katowice by a singer Adam Białoń and a keyboardist Adam Radecki, the group were an expression of their fascination with experiments in style of early Kraftwerk, Cabaret Voltaire and Front 242. Making music was only a departure point. Later emerged ideas for happenings of typically industrial character, taking place in industrial buildings. What dominated there – apart from voice and spoken manifestos – was the music of machines, “played” live and being 100% acoustic (i.e. gears, wheels and other mechanisms that make sound). In addition to performing, the group published leaflets, experimented with photography and recorded a lot of studio music, gradually departing from the initial assumptions of primitive, spontaneous industrial rhythm and sound. In 1993 the band went on hiatus to realize themselves in different projects. After a 20-year break, Düsseldorf have been revived.

Labeling the band as EBM is an oversimplification – in their music one can hear echoes of new wave and early industrial, completed with Suicide’s synth-punk rhythm, minimalistic and aggressive beats associated with DAF, march-like energy bringing to mind works by Laibach, poesy of lyrics in the spirit of Soft Cell, and all of that flavoured with very punk motility. Düsseldorf are a synthesis ad quintessence of what was most interesting about postindustrial music of the 1980s.

Eric Random is one of the pioneers of Manchester experimental scene. His records, released by New Hormones and Crepuscule labels were well received both by the fans and music critics. His collaborations with such artists and bands as Nico (The Velvet Underground), Pete Shelley (Buzzcocks) and Cabaret Voltaire have established him as one of the most important figures in British electronic music. Active mostly in the 1980s, in his works he built bridges between music stylistics very distant from one another. He skillfully combined industrial aesthetics with post-punk, dub with esoteric jazz, new wave with funk and ethnic music with electronic experiment. In his compositions, simple beats mix with raw bass lines, restless guitar motives intertwine with synth melodies and all of that is completed with a whole lot of incredible – sometimes sinister, sometimes hypnotizing sounds. Eric Random’s pieces, based on distinct and stable, pulsating rhythm, are filled with sounds of such non-standard instruments as a horn or a melodica, various manipulations with magnetic tape, silenced melodies and spiced with primitive echoes and reverberations.

Started in 1992, Ex.Order is a project of Knut Enderlein and René Lehmann, especially known for their work with Inade. Where Inade ventures into the realm of deep space ambient, Ex.Order is definitely something more aggressive – a combination of harsh industrial with power electronics, but still aided by sound mastery of their parent group. This is violent and merciless music, full of sonic power based on massive, analogue sound waves supported by heavy mechanic drums, collages of samples and aggressive vocals. The hallmark of Ex.Order are massive walls of sound, accompanied by hypnotic, ambient-noise soundscapes. During their gigs, Ex.Order attack the listeners with incredible dose of noise, which is to your ears like a sunlight beam directed through a magnifying glass straight to an open eye that you cannot close. Despite their uncompromising attitude, it is music played with a sensible approach, constantly controlled by the group’s members, surprisingly multileveled and multi-layered. The sound waves gradually rise and drift away, and instrumental structure continually evolve. Their raw, claustrophobic and fierce aesthetics is the answer to the nightmare of the world we live in. It is a projection of a spirit of ubiquitous industrialization, widespread mind control and moral destitutions of the politicians in power.

Today there are not many bands whose music would evoke simple and gloomy sounds of the 1980s as radically as Frustration, formed in Paris in 2002. Inspired by the most important bands representing post-punk and new wave aesthetics, the members of this French group present their own, raw version of music for the rebellious and the unruly from that era. Pieces by Frustration are powerful songs with pulsating bass line, insane and fierce vocals, spastic rhythm of the drums and degenerated sound of the keyboard. There is no place for sophisticated experiment, clean or refined sounds – but there is a homage to the brutal simplicity of Warsaw, Joy Division’s unmelancholic sadness, punk energy of Wire, sincere intensity of The Fall, intransigence of Crisis and uncompromising attitude of early Killing Joke. Despite being clearly anchored in the tradition of the past, Frustration sound incredibly modern and current – this is music opposing contemporary cliches, saccharine idols, muzak from shopping malls and coloured, false reality from magazine covers. Frustration are the antithesis of bland, commercial version of rock music we are fed with by the official media on a daily basis.

Job Karma treats industrial as a starting point for artistic freedom, exploration and unlimited experiments. As a codeword which involves industrial noise, elaborate, multilayer ambient as well as dance beat. The principle behind the music of Job Karma was always: no limits. A distinctive, immediately recognizable aspect of Job Karma’s music is the sound created from age-old low and high frequency generators and oscillators, sine waves. Unique sounds of devices, which were not originally designed to be musical instruments, links with modulated by timbres of old analog synthesizers. The pieces are constructed on loops, timbre spots, blends and sequences. The integral element of Job Karma’s tracks are samples discovered in the archives and those recorded by the sound artists themselves, on different continents. Mostly in North Africa and Asia Minor. In trance forms, rituals of vision and sound, Job Karma’s music work joins urban primitivism and reflects cyivilisation overload. The project debuted in 1997 as a duo formed by Maciej Frett and Aurelisz Pisarzewski, with permanent collaboration of a visual artist Arkadiusz Baginski, enriching their concerts with video projections of his auteur films. Musical activity comes along with popularisation activity. The members of Job Karma are also the curators of the festival we are attending now

Łódź is one of the most industrialised cities in Poland. For ears it was dominated by light industry, but even after the transformation in the early 1990s, the infrastructure of the ruined industry still emitted noise. Sound coming from huge weaving plants could be heard all the time, day and night. This created something in a shape of a special sonic sphere – the city sound. And it was exactly that place, dominated by machine noise, filled with factory complexes and huge abandoned storehouses where the band Jude was formed in 1993. Its members used the industry and considered it as a source of inspiration, as well as a working material as such. This relationship between five individuals operating within a music group expanded the range of their communication to include other media, such as video, print, performance. Their visual layer was based on the language of totalitarian propaganda.

The attempt to categorise the group within established genres is pointless – Jude play fierce music of instincts and impulses, overloaded with emotions that might conventionally be described using such terms as industrial-hardcore-punk-noise. Jude treat industrial as culture and an attitude. Jude use noise, music, technology and visual arts as weapons. Jude is rooted in punk, but is industrial by vocation. [rj]

The Legendary Pink Dots are a Netherlands-based band formed in August 1980 in the UK who, although distinctly underground, have reached the status of one of the most influential groups of the end of the 20^th century and the beginning of the 21^st century. The music by this cult project is difficult to categorise – today, their discography amounts to over 80 studio and concert albums, not including countless mini-albums, singles and other releases. Making a virtually impossible attempt to describe their music, one could only approximately state that it is an incredible amalgamation of psychedelic rock, industrial, new wave, synth-pop, krautrock and experimental music. You can find absolutely everything there – melodic pop is mixed with primal industrial brutality, exotic psychedelia borders on sounds inspired by classical music, composition of rock structures are filled with radical avant-garde experiments.

The central persona in the band is the charismatic vocalist and songwriter Edward Ka-Spel, whose moving voice and dark, fierce, apocalyptic lyrics are defining characteristics of The Legendary Pink Dots.

For almost three decades of its existence, the band have collaborated with numerous distinguished music projects, such as Nurse With Wound, The Dresden Dolls, Jarboe, HNAS, Jim O’Rourke and Skinny Puppy, to name a few.

Lustmord’s music has always had the power to transfer the listener to different dimensions. The Wales-born Brian Williams is a representative of the classic industrial movement of the late 1970s. He started as one of the artists affiliated with Industrial Records, then cooperated with SPK and Chris and Cosey as CORE and the Creative Technology Institut. He also ran his own label, Side Effects. None of the readers seems to have to be reminded of the total significance of his mature albums, such as , , or . Their quality and power cannot be overestimated, even today, in the times when every kind of art is devalued. The prominent artist has enjoyed great success for a long time, also as a sound designer working for Hollywood, to which he was brought by SPK’s Graeme Revell. In addition to his high-class Lustmord work, Brian Williams regularly composes music for films and computer games. The personal abyss of Lustmord doesn’t stand still. In recent years, his music has come out to the surface from underground dungeons. This does not mean, however, that the sonic palette is brighter. While it used to ooze out of the interiors of ruined cathedrals, dark dungeons, underground labyrinths, and cold bunkers, today the Lustmord sonisphere is inspired by desolate locations and deserts – places of merciless nature – the dangerous interior of America. Brian Williams has been performing live for over a dozen years. His live performances met with an enthusiastic response. What he produces with his small Powerbook is monumental, demonic, and overwhelming. It has a power that can be called destructive and overwhelming – one that can equally generously inspire you and give you strength. [ws]

Lustmord is definitely the most important and recognized music venture of a Scottish musician, sound engineer and film score composer Brian Williams. Started in 1980, Lustmord is often considered the first dark ambient project in history, and the album Heresy from 1990 was hailed as the milestone of the whole genre.

For Brian Williams, basically every sound material serves as means of creating his atmospheric, dark music. In his works he uses field recordings from crypts, catacombs, caves, slaughterhouses, shelters, mines, cathedrals, as well as signals from the outer space, which he skillfully combines with ritualistic incantations and Tibetan horns. He treats all available (although carefully selected) acoustic phenomena by enriching them with digital bass effects, this way creating the best quality dark ambient.

Lustmord has collaborated with, among others, Tool, The Melvins, Chris & Cosey (Throbbing Gristle), SPK, John Balance (Coil), Paul Haslinger (Tangerine Dream), Robert Rich, Clock DVA, Current 93 and Nurse with Wound. He is also a member of the group Puscifier, started by Maynard James Keenan, a vocalist of Tool and A Perfect Circle. He has provided remixes for Tool, Jarboe (Swans), Venetian Snares, Lori Carson, Mortiisa, Isis, Puscifer and Nadja. He has contributed to 44 Hollywood film soundtracks, and his sound effects have been featured in numerous video games. [rj]

Micromelancolié is a project started in 2002 by Robert Skrzyński, who creates repetitive structures set within the glitch aesthetics by the use of microsamples, found sounds, field recordings and feedback loops.Micromelancolié records have been released mainly on tape by labels from different continents, includingA Beard of Snails (DK), Already Dead Tapes (US), Ghetto Naturalist Series (US), Jozik Records (FI), Quasi Pop (UA), Rocket Machine Tapes (AU) Sangoplasmo (PL), Metaphysical Circuits (DK) and MonotypeRec. (PL). In 2013 the label BDTA released a CD-R called #p st-m d rn_summertime – the first collection of Skrzyński’s solo records in Poland. A year later, due to the efforts of Gdańsk-based label Zoharum, four experimental compositions, bordering on such genres as ambient, drone or clicks’n’cuts sawthe light of day in a form of an LP It Doesn’t Belong Here.

Since 2012 Robert has actively collaborated with a Norwegian artist Sindre Bjerga, which resulted in Prayer Calls LP, released in 2012 byAurora Borealis (UK), Momentum CD-R, released a year later by Twice Removed (AU) and a few recordings that are coming out soon on MonotypeRec. (PL) or Black Horizons (US) labels.

The music by Roma Amor duo is situated somewhere at the crossroads between folk-filled melodic Italian hits from the 1960s and cabaret romanticism of contemporary French bards like Jacques Brel. Driven by nostalgia for the atmosphere of the old Europe, which music scenes were dominated by waltz, tango ad cabaret music, in their pieces they try to evoke and bring back these times gone by. Sophisticated and sentimental works can be described as Neo Folk, Chanson Noir and Neo Cabaret. Unlike many contemporary formations stylistically close to Roma Amor, their music refers to the traditions of German cabaret only to a small extent – here, much more important than songs by legendary Austrian Lotte Lenya or Bertold Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera is the inspiration with romantic French pop and bloody Italian operas.

Difficult to forge, warm and sensual sound is based on the use of traditional instruments (such as accordion, piano and castanets) as well as rough and hoarse voice of female vocalist Euski, in which one can hear a note of drunken grandeur of Italian and French chansonniers. In their compositions, Roma Amor express the despair that surrounded tragic disintegration of bygone tradition – the one you would like to come across in smoky backstreet cafes, in melancholic pubs where the regulars drown their everyday sorrows and on street corners where threadbare musicians ply their trade.

This music is not about purity or perfection – it is a sonic iteration of fragility: the fragility of history, the fragility of prosperity, and the fragility of the human spirit.

Created in 2001, the Berlin-based formation Sektion B is one of the best-known projects of the new generation of German power electronics, which earned global recognition for its specific, very technical sound and high level of artistry, standing out from other similar projects. Unlike many traditional formations from the PE genre, whose works express themselves in a chaotic and violent noise, Sektion B make rhythmical music set in precise, strict structures and characterized by bold, fierce and minimalist sound. The idea of the group’s members is an uncompromising cultural terrorism – their pieces address current socio-political reality of the contemporary world: globalisation, exploitation, crisis of capitalism, callousness, global conspiracy, political terrorism, oil wars, control of psychoactive substances and aim to destroy individualism by any means and to turn people into slaves of corporations. Sektion B offer raw, reactionary music and present a sharp accusation of and answer to the world heading towards the apocalypse.

Matt Howden is an English violinist that uses his own name for his solo neo-classical work, to separate it from his song-based material, which goes under the name of Sieben. Sieben is the one of the many projects of the musical artist Matt Howden. He has worked as producer, songwriter, session musician, and score composer. He currently lives in Sheffield, UK. Whilst Sieben is his most well known creation, he has been a collaborator with The Raindogs (Portugal), Sol Invictus (UK), Tony Wakeford (UK), L’Orchestra Noir (UK), L’Ame Immortelle (AT), Emilie Autumn (USA), Faith & The Muse (USA), Of The Wand And The Moon (DK), Larsen (IT), Chris Eckman (USA), Spiritual Front (IT), Shock Headed Peters (UK), Hekate (DE), Job Karma (PL), The Mystery School (USA) HaWthorn (UK) and many others. He releases neoclassical music under his own name.

Matt’s main instrument is violin and he is entirely self-taught. The story goes that, at 18, he was given a friend’s grandfather’s violin and then alienated friends and family over a two year period, finally unleashing himself upon an unsuspecting public in the streets of Newark, Lincoln and Grantham. He moved to Sheffield in 1986 and was part of the vibrant music scene in Sheffield playing in The Glass Hammers, Pig64, Yonni, and Stiki.

Sieben exists because of the I-Ching. Matt was given a reading by a friend which told him to make music he wanted to, not the music he thought people would like. This led to Matt throwing himself into a fully solo career, which indulged and channelled his fantasy and passion into violin and voice.

The premise and spirit of Sieben is layers – layers of instrument and voice that hypnotically draws you into a world of emotion. Lyrically, the themes shift and change from album to album, but are linked by the same sense of dissonance – the smooth, superficially melodious voice belies the dark, quick, twisted stories. Intelligent, quirky use of metaphor and archaic language is set against a backdrop of texture rich music.

The central place of the violin and Howden’s unusual way of playing it give’s Sieben a distinct sound which makes comparison difficult. Whilst, Sieben is frequently classified as neofolk, goth & experimental the music, and the man, could be as well described as alternative, indie, beautiful, brilliant, melancholy freak folk…the list goes on

DISCOGRAPHY: Matt has played over 1,800 shows, 35+ countries across the world, played with many artists on various scenes, made music for film and television, released 18 studio albums (and a 10CD boxset) to date.

Synapsis is a music project launched in 2009 on the initiative of Dawid Chrapla and Andrzej Turziak. Charpla was a member of such formations as Hated Bruit Kollektiv, ADTX and Abtybiotix, and performed solo under a pseudonym Nojsens. He also collaborated with such artists as XV Parówek, Arszyn or Hubert Napiórski. Turziak is responsible for projects Multipoint Injector and Wulgata. The combination of their music fascinations brought into existence a duo working on the border of their different music worlds. The music by Synapsis is a unique form of industrial, noise and dark ambient, based mainly on mechanical samples taken directly from factories and foundries. Although it is rooted in the industrial tradition, there is no space for pure noise here – it is rather focused on trance meditation. The duo’s compositions, due to their use of the whole range of aftersounds and distorted echoes, may at times appear disturbing and sinister, but as a whole they mainly present diversified, etheric soundscapes of different tones and sounds. In these pieces there is no place for excessive aggression – what we find here is a rich dose of pulsating hypodermic sound energy.

Started in 1997, Troum is a project of two Bremen-based musicians: Stefan Knappe and Martin Gitschel, the former members of an influential ambient-industrial bandMaëror Tri. The word they have chosen to be the group’s name means ‘a dream’ in old German, and it is a dream – considered as a central manifestation of unconsciousness – that symbolises the musicians’ aim, which is to bring the listener into a trance state of mind similar to dreaming, to a pre-verbal and primal sphere of consciousness. Troum uses music as a direct path to the Unknown, pointing at the archaic essence of the deepest layers of the human psyche. The project’s compositions are inspired by post-industrial aesthetics, minimalist electronica and drones. It is not electronic music though – both group members use a guitar, bass, vocals, accordion, balalaika, flutes, harmonica, melodica and gongs. There is no place for synthesizers, samplers or computer-generated sounds here – the whole sound is created in an organic and natural way. The sonic panorama composed of synthetic sounds enriched with elements of field recordings, prepared tapes and all kinds of sound objects creates a specific background music of a dream-like atmosphere.

The project’s logo is a spiral – a symbol of trance potential of Troum’s music and of attempts to reach the inner, deeply hidden spheres of mind. This music is the door to unknown and strange dimensions, an expression of the mystery of existence itself.

One of the meanings of the word ‘wrangle’ refers to the attempt at taming old analogue devices. This is where the name of the new collaborative project comes from. Its members are three renowned musicians from different spheres of experimental electronic music: Steven Mallinder, a pioneer of the industrial aesthetics and a founder and singer of the honoured band Cabaret Voltaire; Benge – a world’s guru of modular synthesizers, and Phil Warren – a member of a distinguished folktronica group Tunng. These three musicians have decided to use the experience gained during years of practice in managing analogue equipment and to face the unpredictable possibilities offered by the devices they have been collecting for decades.

The main idea of Wrangler is to use the preserved technology from the past, inherited from those who had got rid of it and exchanged it with the digital – shining with freshness, tempting with functionality and encouraging with a small, convenient size. The fact that you can’t just switch the old equipment on and expect it to do whatever it is told to do was a reason good enough to take the collective challenge. The project’s members assumed that the digital is merely a process of cloning, and the analogue is a process of a unique representation in which nothing can be repeated in exactly the same way. Wrangler refers to the physical aspect of creating electronic music, which requires physical presence of an instrument, as well as its imperfections which introduces the element of unpredictability in the creative process. Wrangler is a pure sonic retrofuturism.