Bleep

Considering the otherworldly arrangements that Polish composer Wojciech Rusin conjures across his second album, Syphon opens on a hauntingly human note.

Eden Girma’s operatic soprano launches ‘Speculum Veritatis’ in isolation, remaining acapella until tinkering percussion and a rumbling bass turn Girma’s vocals into a distorted growl. Syphon is the second in an “alchemical” trilogy that reanimates medieval and renaissance music with synthesised alterations, but if anything, Rusin finds a terrifying thrill in extracting alien compositions out of human performances.

Case in point: ‘Words into Shapes’ is a surprisingly traditional waltz until its string section disintegrates into ashy nothingness mid-song, whereas ‘After A Feast’ evokes an opera set in the digestive tract of a mythical creature. Syphon’s two vocalists, Girma and Emmy Broughton, do wonders in keeping the album’s arrangements grounded while also tricking the mind into assuming we can expect any sustained normalcy in Rusin’s creations.

The trilogy’s first entry, 2019’s The Funnel, was a memorable introduction to a composer that appeared non-commital towards neo-classical or experimental labels, but Syphon somehow derives more beauty and terror in the in-between. Keeping with The Funnel’s employment of unorthodox instrumentation, Rusin boasts “3D printed instruments, multilayered bagpipe chanters, double recorders and other hybrids” in creating the album’s AI-like approximations of modern composition. More than aiming to unnerve, the composer’s goal is in reconstructing the past, aiming for familiarity “via incomplete fragments.”

"In a future where the old semantic systems don’t apply anymore,” the album’s press notes offer, “what we are left with is some kind of delirium." In that case, delirium has never sounded more enthralling.