Artists have long been drawn to decay, the scope and focus shifting over time, but the inherent connotations of life and death and fascination with the phenomena endure. It speaks to awe, to the beautiful and the terrible, and to the inevitability of change. Venoms, the fourth release from Warsaw-based composer and producer Bartek Kuszewski’s Rites of Fall, is a vibrating survey of deterioration—whether personal, collective, psychic, or environmental—and its tension with forces of resiliency and transformation. Two years in the making, Venoms is a practice unto itself, utilizing field recordings, metallic and clamoring FM synths, percussive elements and patterns, live instrumentation, sounds natural and mechanical, improvised and studied. Standout tracks include "Maladapted," with its bright chirping urgency finding a way through agitated swarms; “Bloodline,” a volley of percussive elements over the persistent throbbing of a pulse that will not be extinguished; and “Vegetation Echelons,” an elegant resolution of sound and abstract voices, of places reclaimed and life reimagined.

Leidforschung