VI Wrocław Industrial Festival
“We are ALL SOUNDS ALLOWED. We give new life to manufacture wastes and other unwanted items by making them play industry anthems. A.S.A. came to life in 2004 after ephemerical project “Whispering in bushes” (which eventually did not perform in public) was no more. Three of the band members (STF, Mr. Majster, Culex) decided to abandon rock music and begun a journey in search of new sounds using self made instruments. Pipes, barrels, metal, sheet iron and springs are the raw materials for their musical expression. The final effect is a combination of mechanical rythm mixed with the creak and tumult of twisted iron accompanied by bass guitar and electronic loops. It is a permanent experiment, done on the verge of safety rules, each performance is unique.”
Apoptose is the best kept secret in ambient / neoclassical / post-industrial scene. Despite releasing 3 well-received CDs on the Tesco Organisation, this one-man act from Germany remains a hidden gem. Apoptose & the 14 drummers of the Fanfarenzug Leipzig will play their third concert ever at the Wroclaw Industrial Festival with a very special and surprising guest in lineup:Gary Carey of the English band Joy of Life (vocals).
Massimo Magrini—a talented musician and engineer of new technologies—has been leading his trademark project: Bad Sector for many, many years now. He is a person utterly fascinated by science, and any electronic sounds and instruments. With years of experience and education gained in the field of computer music, Magrini became famous for creating his very own, new instruments – digital and analog alike—which he later used in his own recordings. Compositions of Bad Sector are best described as a blend of ambient, noise, minimal and experimental music. The artist himself prefers to describe his creations as a deeply emotional, dark ambient noise. Hobbies of the artists can be easily derived from the names of his records and tracks—subjects such as microbiology, algebra, quantum physics and space exploration constitute his sources of inspiration. It is no wonder why the recordings themselves are so diverse in the choice of sounds—radio waves and signals, humming of high-voltage installations, the noises of spacecrafts such as satellites: in Magrini’s mind all of the above are valid ingredients for creating music. The way they get interwoven is masterful indeed, with the final product being a harmonious, drone-like stream of sounds. The music of Bad Sector is extremely rich in detail—shimmering with million individual pieces per minute, where every single click or electric micro-zap is an equivalent of a single molecule or atom. At times the music can lose some of its volume, almost delicate and ethereal it sheds its darkness and aggression, other times it can display some loud, ominous and dark elements.
HATI 100% Recycled Sound Installation (PL)
HATI is a musical project based on acoustic instruments sounding. HATI uses ethnic istruments (Asian gongs, North African drums and clarinets, Polish wooden trumpets and horns) and hand-made instruments or find objects of scrap metal, plastic, wood. Musicians use electronic equipments to modulate acoustic sound as well. HATI connects a personal interest in modern improvised and acoustic music with ritual and meditation music. The band was founded in Torun, Poland, in 2001 by Rafal Iwanski and Dariusz Wojtas. They formed many psychedelic rock and industrial and experimental musical projects since the beginning of the 90.
INSEKT originally was formed in 1989 by Eric Van Wonterghem and Mario Vaerewijck, respective members from the eighties legendary Belgian EBM bands Vomito Negro and Klinik. After the band’s 5th album “in the eye” Eric and Mario both felt the urge to cryogenically suspend the INSEKT and focus on other projects. Eric set up his famous MONOLITH project and joined Dirk Ivens in SONAR, one of the biggest industrial acts of the last decade, while Mario contributed in the band LOWPASS, in 2003 INSEKT decided to start working on new material which resulted in the release of their “Ohrwrmer” and later “Teenmachine”, INSEKT is back and more alive than ever!
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
Klangstabil was founded in 1994 by maurizio blanco and boris may. maurizio blanco and boris may met in 1994. before then, maurizio blanco had already spent most of his life experimenting with electronic music and expressing his own ideas, however boris may had only been listening to music up to that point in time. both of them soon realised that they were communicating on the same level. soon, a new vision was formed: to make people see music in a different way by employing new techniques and ideas. the name, klangstabil, more or less came off the top of their heads, but it fit quite well for both of them. they started producing without ever having the intention of having anything released; in their opinion, they were merely researching personal expression. their main inspiration was and is still kraftwerk. not after long, they were performing in small live-acts which resulted in a record-label showing interest in them. their first production was released on vinyl, and you can expect to see more of the same in the future.klangstabil’s work ethic can be accurately defined as: one step back, two steps forward. with this attitude, klangstabil is creating their own niche by taking principal elements of the very beginning of electronic music and relating these elements to the modern times today. in order to understand what surrounds us day by day, one has to see things from the perspective of creation. as more progress is made, more questions arise. to put it simply: how does a tune get created, what is its meaning and what is its sound there for? in order to understand, one has to go and live through the decades of a wide musical spectrum. klangstabil continues to give an acoustic answer to the question: “what’s next?”
MERZBOW was created in Tokyo in 1979 under the direction of Masami Akita, and he is the godfather of Noise as a genre. His discography contains over 300 separate releases, often in collaborations. In 2001 he released the highly acclaimed “Merzbox,” a boxed 50-CD collection of many of this earlier rare and unreleased recordings. To this day Masami continues to record and release music at an unmatched rate.”I wanted to compose real surrealistic music in a non-musical way. Surrealism is also reaching unconsciousness. Noise is the primitive and collective consciousness of music. My composition is automatism, not improvisation.” Masami Akita (Interview with Oskari Mertalo)
OPENING PERFORMANCE ORCHESTRA (CZ)
After nearly two decades of private musical activity, Opening Performance Orchestra presented its work publicly for the first time in a performance in 2006. In the same year the seven-member group self-published its first CD, inspired by the work of Hiroshi Hasegawa, a former member of the Japanese noise band C.C.C.C. Opening Performance Orchestra’s sound concept is based on so-called fraction music emerging from the creed “The world is just an endless multitude of fragments: some already present and some not yet born.”
Ordo Rosarius Equilibrio rose from the ashes of Archon Satani in May 1993 as founding member Tomas Pettersson apperceived the desire to canalize his remaining creativity through the aesthetic portrayal of the undivided spiritual and intellectual kinship between Light and Dark, Life and Death, Male and Female, Love and Hate, Beauty and Depravity, War and Peace – thus the genesis of Equilibrium and the advancement beyond into the perfection of Roses.Ordo Rosarius Equilibrio is an aesthetic constellation situated somewhere on the illusive boundary between the impending apocalypse & the orgies of ancient Rome; and accompanied by the sound of acoustic guitars, cyclic soundscapes, strings and percussions; come songs on the threshold of the sensually seductive and morally reprehensible; gospels on the verge of the conjecturally acclaimed and what’s soon to be condemned. The music is contemporarily referred to as Apocalyptic Pop, but its continuing variation over the past thirteen years extends further and perfectly congregates a variation of nuances into the distinguishing essence of that which is Ordo Rosarius Equilibrio.
Founded in New York City in 1999 Post Scriptvm creates dark electronic music that has been described as concertedly dreamlike, mesmerizing, claustrophobic, and disturbing. The project’s obsessive audio explorations of entropy and inner turmoil span a wide range of genres; incorporating dark ambient, death industrial, and experimental sounds with old school industrial aesthetics. Post Scriptvm has releases on various labels in USA, Italy, France and Germany. The most recent album “Raspad” made Post Scriptvm the newest addition to the roster of the infamous Tesco Organization record label.
Schloss Tegal is Richard Schneider (Prague) and MWBurch (New York) who were the first dark pioneers into intrinsic music for psychological purposes who have become a cult electronic music group over the last 2 decades. Their CDs are a mix of graphical information in the form of audio tapes and samples that resemble more of a anthropological film or study rather than music per se. The music is extreme and overpowering psychogenic (psychological / hallucination) noise barrage with subliminal cryptic audio not for the squeemish. Schloss Tegal use graphic content in their audio and visual performances.
Since 1985, Eraldo Bernocchi, P.NG5361.B and Luca Di Giorgio (as well as a long list of friends and collaborators) have been working as SIGILLUM S an Italian post – industrial audio project of many different natures, where concepts have led the effort and employed sound as a tool for the exploration of the forbidden areas of the subconscious: the result has been a endless paradigm of alien electronic mutations, merging concrete noise research with acoustic transmigration, while visuals and many other forms of media have been also adopted, in order to achieve maximum interaction intensity.
Active since 1985, Sigillum S cannot be easily labelled, despite the fact that it is associated chiefly with the industrial aesthetics. The founders of the group, Paolo Bandera and Luca di Giorgio, set a very specific task for themselves right in the beginning – to use sound as a tool for exploration of hidden and denied spheres of the human subconscious. And so, with each subsequent release they have been broadening the range of means, genres and instruments without becoming attached to any specific sound but instead seeking new ones. The project’s compositions are endless electronic sound mutations in which pure noise coming from the avant-garde musique concrète background merges with acoustic transmigrations. The collection of instruments used by the musicians is impressive – from electronic samplers, all the way through ethnic instruments or guitar to short wave generators. Each subsequent record of the project takes the listener on farther musical journeys, where diverse aesthetics, such as noise, dub, ambient or ritualistic music, are used as means of expression of equal importance.
Don’t scratch your eyes, the rhythm’n’noise bedrock that is SONAR is back, “Future Cries” on HANDS being their 8th studio album after a break of nine years , unmistakably recognizable from the first hard-hitting loops there is this all-embracing hypnotic and repetitive style that Sonar has always been about. With an upfront noise mayhem for the dance floors and soothing bass tones. Simultanous released with the highly sought-after double 10 inch vinyl remix album on HANDS wich finally is now available on CD. Dirk Ivens and Eric Van Wonterghem have lived up to a special challenge: The trademark dense crashing waves of noise leave not much breathing room, and while they surely followed suit in accordance with their own sonic legacy, they have created a fresh and considerably varied take on the SONAR sound.
SONAR one of the most influential acts in the genre , has played a pivotal role in shaping the industrial music scene, beginning with their self-titled debut album in 1996. It’s essential to acknowledge the rich history this duo represents from their roots in the collaborative project Absolute Body Control to their individual contributions with Dive, The Klinik, Motor!k, Insekt and Monolith.
Born in 1977, in the heady atmosphere of San Francisco’s postpunk golden age, the band soon became a central part of New York’s No Wave scene (as documented in the recent “Downtown 81” film, centered around Jean Michel Basquiat and featuring performances by Blondie, James Chance, DNA and Tuxedomoon). “No Tears”, their 2nd single (1979), has remained an electro punk club classic to this day.The band went on to sign to The Residents’ Ralph Records, and released two seminal albums, “Half Mute” and “Desire”, which soon got them overseas exposure.Fleeing Reagan’s America, Tuxedomoon moved to Europe in the early ’80s, and stayed there throughout the decade. Although their ability to crystallize a certain dark and romantic zeitgeist quickly turned them into one of the most influential bands around, their music transcended all genres and included impossibly wide parameters – rock, electronics, minimal music, classical, jazz, Gypsy music and pop were all simultaneously consumed and transmutated into a quasi-prescient blend.After releasing a string of albums on CramBoy (the imprint they set up with Brussels-based label Crammed Discs), the band stopped recording together in 1988, and the various members pursued solo careers, becoming as disparate geographically as sonically, with Steven Brown (vocals, keyboard & saxophone) living in Mexico, Peter Principle (bass, electronics) in New York, Blaine L. Reininger (vocals, violin, guitar) in Greece, and Luc Van Lieshout (trumpet) & Bruce Geduldig (films/visuals) in Brussels.Many years later, Tuxedomoon got back together to write and record the awesome “Cabin In The Sky” album (2004), which found them in absolute top form, as romantic, rebellious and boundlessly imaginative as they ever were. “Cabin” featured contributions by a carefully hand-picked selection of guests such as Tarwater, Tortoise’s John McEntire, Nouvelle Vague’s Marc Collin, Aksak Maboul (aka Crammed founder Marc Hollander and Konono N1 producer Vincent Kenis) and DJ Hell. Shortly after finishing “Cabin In The Sky”, Tuxedomoon traveled back to San Francisco, the band’s birthplace, in order to start writing material for their next album. But the local atmosphere had unexpected effects on them, and drove them to record a series of “spontaneous compositions” (as Mingus would have put it) instead, which soon formed the basis of a side project entitled “Bardo Hotel Soundtrack”, loosely connected to Brion Gysin’s novel The Bardo Hotel’ set in the Paris hotel where he and William Burroughs invented the radical cut-up/fold-in technique.Both “Cabin …” and “Bardo Hotel …” were warmly welcomed, and a wildly eclectic, almost surreal array of references sprang from the pens of reviewers trying to describe Tuxedomoon’s music (Charles Ives, Radiohead, Philip Glass, Miles Davis, German electronica, Tom Waits, John Cage, Kurt Weill, Tortoise, Can ). If anything, these two recent albums revealed that Tuxedomoon were never connected to a particular period: they had become ’80s cult figures simply because that’s the period in which they happened to develop and rise to fame… but the band have always been evolving in their own space, and their music is as relevant and fresh today as it was then. An impression to be further strengthened by their upcoming new album “Vapour Trails”.
Vilgoć is a project that tries to enclose emotions in a radical, static sound formula. Stylistically, Vilgoć oscillates around the aesthetics of Harsh Noise Wall. Active since 1998, Vilgoć in its assumptions aims to noise deprivation – because Vilgoć is a Touch. Therefore, Vilgoć is a withdrawal into the world of one’s own limitations. Limitaions that distort everything with sound.
Over the past 10 years, Volcano The Bear have created a unique music that is without bounds, and their live performances are bizarre spectacles to behold. Drawing on a huge range of musical influences, including indigenous folk music, free jazz and musique concrete, Volcano The Bear produce music that is wholly their own, moving freely between improvisation and composition, and between instruments, voices and objects. Their music is at times ritualistic, theatrical, beautiful and absurd, and in live performance allows anything to happen at any given time.This is what people have said about VTB”Volcano The Bear have produced some of the finest, wildest British music of the last 10 years on record and on stage…” (The Wire, Jan 2006)”No one sounds, has sounded or will ever sound quite like Volcano the Bear.” (LosingToday)”…Its the trios originality that is most striking, and ultimately they sound like nothing else … An inspired use of sonic material” (The Wire, Classic Erasmus Fusion review)
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