Where is Wojciech Rusin? He lives in London, but our conversation quickly moves to the West Coast of the US in the 1970s and then leads through the frozen-in-time Carpathian Mountains and the tottering 5th century buildings of Venice. This is not without reason – on his latest album, Honey for the Ants, as on the earlier parts of the so-called Alchemical Trilogy – 2019‘s The Funnel and 2022’s Syphon, the composer and visual artist ventures into the musical, historical and geographical chaos.
Marcin Zimmermann
Piramida Instytut
Marcin Zimmermann: For the previous parts of the Alchemical Trilogy, you mentioned being inspired by Hermes Trismegistus’ Gnostic texts like Corpus Hermeticum. What was your inspiration for Honey for the Ants?
Wojciech Rusin: Actually, the three albums can be seen as a single piece.In terms of inspiration, it was the work of Erik Davies, including his podcast Expanding Mind and his book High Weirdness. In both the podcast and the book, Davies touches on hippies on the West Coast of the US in the 1970s. I was inspired by the general sense of freedom associated with the area, how strange people it attracted and continues to attract, and how the West Coast of the US became a place that combined all sorts of influences – such as the influence of psychedelic culture and Buddhism.
M.Z.: When I listen to your music, it seems to me that you don’t just combine influences, but that you take them to terra incognita – a bit like Daniel Lopatin, aka Oneothrix Point Never. He also creates out of a chaos of references.
W.R.: Chaos has a lot to do with the subconscious. In a way, that’s how I see London, where I live every day. Sometimes you walk into an alley here and don’t know where you are.
M.Z.: Such unexplored territory seems to interest you – both as a musician and an instrument designer.In your thesis you came up with speculative instruments and proposed a theory of their origin in the Carpathian Mountains.
W.R.: The play with assumptions is an attractive artistic strategy from the position of an immigrant. Also, what I do is on the borderline of disciplines – instrument design, music and a kind of made-up ethnomusicology. When people ask me what kind of competence I have to work in this field, I say I am a dilettante. I enter through the back door.
M.Z.: What about the track on Honey for the Ants called Carpathian Stone Spinners. Does this title mean that you continue to expand your theory?
W.R.: It’s a poetic reference. In terms of ethnomusicology – that kind of extension would require in-depth research. I treat the instruments I design more like art. Of course I did some academic research when working on their designs, but it was relatively loose.
M.Z.: And yet, other musicians use the instruments you designed. One can even buy these instruments in the shop you run – The Pippe Shoppe
W.R.: At first, I didn’t even think about selling them. After graduation, I started showing pictures of them on social media, and because I have a lot of musician friends, it turned out that there was interest in these instruments.
I think it comes from practical reasons. For example, one of these instruments is a double flute made according to a design proposed in the Middle Ages. Nowadays, it is quite difficult to buy it any other way.
M.Z.: Going back to chaos – I am looking at the tracklist of Honey for the Ants. After Carpathian Stone Spinners comes the track Kittens meet Puppies for the First Time.
W.R.: (laughs) It originated from a video on Instagram with the same title. I thought what an absurd tool this algorithm is that such a title generates a huge amount of views.
M.Z.: I think we’ve reached the end of the Instagram algorithm, so let’s go back to to the topic of places on the album.
W.R.: Here we also come to the point of whether there is such a thing as being inspired by places and whether inspiration comes from the immediate experience of a place or a memory of it .
For example, I have never been to the West Coast of the US. The piece Behind the Palazzo was inspired by a moment when I got lost in Venice. As a tourist, I find Venice to be very surreal. When you walk among all these buildings that are actually crooked, you realise there is something very dreamy about this city.
M.Z.: I think, one can sense your reach for the dreaminess of the album. Gifts for the surgeon is a track that melodically fades away…
W.R.: This piece is an aestheticization of a certain event that was very existential for me, namely – the colon surgery I underwent in 2021. The situation was quite critical, so the doctors had to be very hasty. I remember that through the painkillers I was given, I had the sensation of being in a completely different place. I put this experience, the course of this operation, in the form of a piece about a procession that carries gifts to the surgeon.
I recovered, but the period of recovery, which lasted six months, coincided with the first wave of COVID and the disruptions that went with it. Because of the closure of public spaces, this period was very unreal for me.
M.Z.: Moving forward in time. Where is Wojciech Rusin now?
W.R.: I’ve recently found out that I have ADHD, so my interest in doing so many things is starting to come together for me. I also feel that living in London is an experiment in productivity, so I’m thinking about moving. I’ll go wherever the wind takes me.