Wrong Filament by Robert Piotrowicz

Wrong Filament embodies Robert Piotrowicz’s creation of fictional traditional music — not studied but invented, a utopian and oniric construct that becomes tangible in sound. These imagined traditions act as communal forces of music-making, resisting dominant structures of power.

The album unfolds in six dense compositions built on rhythm, repetition and minimal melodic gestures that draw on archetypal patterns of Eastern European traditions. Entirely synthetic yet strikingly instrumental in character, they develop as autonomous sound events, expanding into multi-part forms that evoke the physicality of ensemble performance — as if played by an imagined community of musicians.

Rather than reconstruction, Piotrowicz invents forged dances — a pre-techno of sorts, where complex meters and dense textures point to a parallel history of collective sound beyond industrial uniformity. They imagine a utopian and fictional genealogy of collective sound: one where industrial modernity yields to more unstable, communal energies.

This is celebratory music with invocatory charge: calls to dance, echoes of ceremony, microtonal melodies shaped by emotional weight, and traces of Eastern ornamentation stretched through synthetic means. Wrong Filament sacralises performance through sound alone, spinning a world where spectres of collective experience vibrate against the limits of rupture and resistance.

These pieces confront the traces of violence inscribed in body and memory, yet also affirm freedom, emancipation and integration. They manifest celebration, identity and resistance while opening a path toward liberation and shared needs that exceed social, private and intimate categories.

Liner note by Daniel Muzyczuk:

Imagine a scene: a rural wedding is being interrupted by a group of men who just murdered their neighbours. Their hands are dripping with blood, yet they reach to the paralysed musicians and command them to continue playing one particular oberek. Drunken with bloodshed and booze they dance for hours until the violinist cannot take it anymore and gives up despite the possibility of harsh consequences. The fiddle stops making strings tremble. The sound is gone, yet the whole room resonates with muted hum perhaps coming from an inner filament in resonance with the strings. Lyre picks up where fiddle stopped. Hurdy gurdy man joins the drone with a song: „Down through all eternity, the crying of humanity”. The lyrics get more and more specific and deal with ages of exploitation of peasantry. Everyone joins the chorus of a half forgotten dumka. The hardy gurdy man reconstructed it some years ago out of scraps saved from the purges. Everyone resumes the dance which continues until dawn.

This music is coming from fifth world. It was built on the ashes of fourth worlds dreams of a peaceful cohabitation. The dwellers of the fourth world were supposed to use the elements of different traditions to show the common aspirations representatives of the family of men. This place was meant to be based on respect for differences. It is a renewed tradition of Ethnological Forgery Series as established by Can. German krautrockers were attempting to use the spontaneous joy of collective music making unbound by a genre. Wrong Filament is coming from a world where the ethnic traditions were broken by violence. These are not reconstructions of music from specific regions or even their contaminations. Histories of exploitation are turned into dance music. Wrong Filament is an internal string made both for sounding and weaving. Its’ tension is founded by the internalised violence, which makes one both susceptible and resistant. It is activated by waves of cruelty in Eastern Europe, but can enter into resonance with a certain type of archetypical folk.

This is not the first bloody wedding music by Piotrowicz. It is also not the first forgery. He reaches paradoxical effects. His very abstract sound establishes many figurative connotations. Synthesizer previously became a brass ensemble (Lincoln Sea) and organ (Afterlife). In both instances these were not acts of mimicry. Synthesizer was channeling not sounds but whole constructions which are based not on texture resemblance but a structural likeness. Wrong Filament is performed by spectres of an ensemble made of a fiddle, a drum and a hardy gurdy. Narrative structure opens with a violent entrance of the dance motive. Yet the title introduces one more association - spinning. Creating yarn from fibers was perfected in 19th century with industrial loom. Many associated the rhythm of these machines with the characteristic 4/4 time signature of techno music. What would have happened if looms were constructed with a more complex oberek structures based on 3/8 or 3/4? Is this where the filament went wrong? These forged dances reintroduce syncope. With it return a sense of tragic exploitation which took place in rural areas. Techno is the music of collapsing industrialisation. Heavy stepping oberek recounts the stories of breaking feudalism.

Piotrowicz's music embraces the abstractness of subjective sound, its physical essence, as well as the complex constructions of synthetic composition. Moving between intensity, intimacy and sensuality, Piotrowicz composes for electronic and acoustic instruments, Author of installations, radio plays and music videos. Piotrowicz collaborated with visual artists, actors, writers, etc.

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