Wojciech Rusin

Rounding off his shockingly good "alchemical trilogy", Wojciech Rusin applies gnostic logic to more labyrinthine electro-acoustic fabrications of modernist sacred music on 'Honey for the Ants', splicing uncanny chorals with utopian electronic outbursts and his signature arsenal of home-made instrumental tonalities. Nowt else quite like it.

If you caught either of London-based, Poland-born composer and 3D-printed pipe maker Wojciech Rusin's last two albums (2022's 'Syphon' and 2019's 'The Funnel') then you'll already be prepared for this one. He finishes the story by shuffling forward on the timeline; if the first installment examined medieval compositional techniques and sonorities and 'Syphon' focused on the renaissance, 'Honey for the Ants' adds modernism to the canon, integrating more percussion and further modalities. Emmy Broughton, who sang 'Syphon' highlight 'Words into Shapes', appears on 'Magus', operatically cooing bizarre digital-age lyrics ("witness this cyber transaction") over reedy organ chords that mutate into slippery electronics. Rusin keeps animating the narrative, adding eerie woodblock cracks, brassy swells and oscillations that bend unsettlingly around Broughton's voice, eventually ordered into a Ligeti-like chorus of anxious wails.