Wojciech Rusin is an artist intent on introducing cracks into our carefully-built image of the medieval world. For some five years now, the Bristol-based Polish-born composer, sound artist and instrument builder has been working on a loose “alchemical trilogy”, fabricating new dark age soundscapes with his own invented pipes and whistles. Honey for the Ants marks the culmination of that cycle.
Rusin embarked on his alchemical journey with 2019’s The Funnel, which originated simultaneously from a site-specific theatre show and a commission from a temporary radio project. Listening to The Funnel felt like stumbling on a secret radio frequency from the distant past, where autotuned Renaissance polyphonies met with DIY electroacoustic instruments to craft virtual pastoral ambience. The combination was improbable and timely. Rusin found a way to intertwine modern composition with deconstructed electronica and renewed interest in the age-old folk traditions, while at the same time, he spoke the language of a conceptual artist who is familiar with the vocabulary of speculative realism and post-humanist philosophy.
The next album, 2022’s Syphon , was a move forward. The concept of what Rusin called “speculative medieval and renaissance music” was perfected with a sound palette of synthetic harpsichord and Rusin’s 3D printed reed instruments. Featuring gorgeous vocals from Emma Broughton and Eden Girma, Rusin created a world of its own. The speculative medieval narrative of Syphon drew ideas from the Strugatsky brothers’ 1964 novel Hard to Be a God, as he explained in a 2022 interview with tQ. In the Strugatskys’ story, an interloper from Earth visits an alien planet trapped in the medieval age. While the book and its film adaptations depict the vibe of a Bosch-like hellscape bathed in chaos and mud, Rusin’s vision has always been more surgical.
He already had the attention of experimental music heads and fans of Weird Medieval Guys (not mutually exclusive groups), but Honey for the Ants is by no means a grand finale to the trilogy. ‘Flesh Eater’ has the same chopped polyphonies and a vibe like the intro to a Lorenzo Senni track (even if the track never fully envelopes you). New-age-adjacent ‘Magus’ is more in tune with Syphon, where Broughton’s vocal prepares listeners to “witness this cyber transaction”. It’s hard to estimate how “cyber transaction” connects to alchemy. But it reminds us that alchemy is an overused buzzword, which both suits a medieval fraud promising the elixir of eternal life and the transmutation of metals to gold and today’s cryptocurrency frauds (there is, after all, a crypto-company called Alchemy Pay). On the other hand, on tracks like the slow-burning ‘Gifts for the Surgeon’, with its piano and distorted sounds from an ambulance siren, Rusin is trying something new.
Ultimately Rusin seems hesitant about where to go. He doesn’t take the future-past idea to absurd, and often humorous ends, as Montreal-based composer d’Eon does on Leviathan, with its trilling digital dulcimers and harpsichords. The loose narrative of the “alchemical trilogy” appeared to be one of the most appealing aspects of Rusin’s recent work, but on the final album, Honey for the Ants, it is revealed as its biggest trap. A trilogy is a commitment that can, over time, become a burden. Honey for the Ants feels like Rusin is stuck between trying to fulfil the promise and the need to move on to a totally new chapter.
