Alive With Static

Active since the early 2020’s, Olion is one of the key projects within the euro wall-noise scene. To date, it’s put out around seventy releases- taking in both physical and digital form- with stand-alone releases, splits, and collaborations. Sound-wise, their output moves between pummelling, thick-yet oddly soothing. To more texturally layered, and forays into ANW. Behind the project is Olek Browiński from Olsztyn in northern Poland, and he kindly agreed to give us an email interview

M[m]: What are some of your earliest sonic memories, and do any of these connect to your interest in noise?

Olek I began to listen to music consciously when I was 12 and discovered Nirvana - you could say this was my first experience with a relatively hard/aggressive kind of music. What later came was System Of A Down and some other rock-metal entities. As far as real extreme music goes, it was Behemoth for me. From there, I swiftly got under the spell of the 90s Norwegian black metal scene, as well as its later subgenre, the so-called "religious black metal" i.e. Funeral Mist, Katharsis, Deathspell Omega, S.V.E.S.T., etc. It was in 2010 that I welcomed many different genres - John Zorn's music fascinated me, I was listening to krautrock, post-punk... everything that sounded unconventional. I made a friend around that time, who was big into extreme metal too, but also listened to industrial music and neofolk. Owing to him, I also got to know e.g. Coil and Current 93, who were an entry point into industrial for me. I cautiously trod upon these grounds and flirted with Throbbing Gristle, Nurse With Wound, and Esplendor Geometrico among some others. The real breakthrough, which shaped my musical taste, was when I met one amiable guy on the autism spectrum whose special interest was precisely underground industrial, noise and black metal music. I'll call him D. from here on. Thanks to D. I learned that social proof often fails in music. Only because a given musical project has just 20 listeners out there doesn't have to mean it sucks - very often it's the other way round.

M[m]: Please talk about your first encounter with more extreme forms of sound?

Olek It was in 2014 when I started to delve deeper into the most "obscure" styles of noise/PE/industrial/ambient - that period was marked by my pronounced appreciation for e.g. Taint, Dead Body Love, Pedestrian Deposit, Merzbow, Consumer Electronics, Whitehouse, and Cremation Lily - yet I still couldn't stomach "walled noise". I found HNW to be too radical. D. would from time to time send me some material from Vomir, Dead Body Collection, or The Rita, but I'd keep dodging the bullet. In fact, my interest in "walled noise" came a different way - in the years 2017/2018 D. started sending me stuff that represented a slightly less conservative approach to HNW - I'm talking mainly "Ambient Noise Wall" or "Drone Noise Wall" examples of which would be Echolaliac, Dosis Letalis, Eugene Critchley, A View From Nihil, or Sergey Pakhomov and these idiosyncratic forms piqued my curiosity. As 2018 began, HNW only grew more on me and sometime later evolved into a fascination - including the more brutal "conservative" HNW.

M[m]: What was your introduction to the wall noise form?. Was there any particular wall that inspired you to create your own work?

Olek As I said earlier, 2018 was a time when my adoration for HNW and ANW gained peak momentum. The date is no coincidence. D. showed me Perpetual Abjection - a Thai HNW label, most likely the best among those operating today. One album, which made the greatest impression on me, was Dirac Sea's "Negative To The Power Of Infinity" - I had never heard something like that before, those sounds were genuine MAGIC and mind you, I'm not using this word as a loose metaphor. Frankly speaking, everything that Polwach was releasing on PA was on another level - albums of names like Dosis Letalis, James Shearman, or Train Cemetery were not only ingenious music-wise but visually too. As time went by, I discovered a couple of other equally amazing labels like Ominous Recordings, Fall Into Void Records, Lost Light Records, Altar Of Waste, Lurker Bias and many others. If I were to give a brief list of projects which fascinated me the most these'd be: Opaque, She Walks Crooked, Cory Strand/Eugene Critchley, Anonymous Masturbaudioum, Big Hole, Shurayuki-hime, Impermanence, Bruising Pattern, Runway and already mentioned earlier Dosis Letalis and Dirac Sea. I likely forgot about some but it was a really wide variety...

M[m]: When and how did Olion start? And was this your first project?

Olek Starting with the origins of the alias Olion - it's a nickname I've been using since I was 14 y.o. One day I signed up for a then-popular browser game "O-game", which took place in outer space, and that's how I came up with Olion. It's based on my first name Olek, but I gave it a spacelike twist, thus Olion. In junior high, everyone called me that. As Olion I started making music, being only a 14-15 y.o. teenager - I'd compose songs for acoustic guitar, which I called a dictaphone. Later came Guitar Pro 5 with the RSE banks, and I'd register the songs in Audacity, where I'd also feed in my vocals recorded with a cheap microphone. These were VERY amateur attempts at creating music, but they had a charm and - honestly speaking - I regret that most of that stuff was lost (but 2 or 3 tracks were saved, and I have them on my drive - composition-wise they aren't bad stuff!). Sometime later, when I was getting more and more into industrial and electronic music, and I already owned an electric guitar with interface and a "mini studio" with a bunch of effects (Line 6 POD GX), I recorded guitar drones, and I'd edit them in Audacity for hours on end, ha-ha... I'll be honest - as far as the technical stuff goes, I've always been an imbecile. The study of sound editing doesn't go smoothly for me. Today's output is listenable mainly because of my intuition, which is perhaps my strongest asset...

But coming to the point: the two most important dates in the history of Olion are November 2021 and April 2024.

In the second half of 2021 I made a recording which makes me feel really embarrassed to this day - not because of the music quality, but because of the concept. The recording in question is "Generous Cumface" and the music was made of roughly recorded layers of drone accompanied by the sounds of two people making out. Today I'd happily erase that abomination from my discography (but on the other hand - can there be a more noise-like title than "Generous Cumface"?). Paradoxically, that material opened very important doors for me - that album was to Przemek's liking, the guy who operates the Gates Of Hypnos label and the Sado Rituals HNW project, and he decided to release my album on that specific label. After exchanging a couple of messages, he realised that he had met "one of his kin" and invited me to his apartment in Warsaw. There he showed me how he records his HNW - for that purpose he used DAW software on PC and - what's relevant - he let me try and record a wall myself. He promptly instructed me how to use the interface and demonstrated how to generate noise source and create an effect chain. I messed around for 1,5h being totally mesmerised, and eventually built a chain of 9 effects. Then I played the wall to Przemek, and he said it was pretty good. I asked him to save it and send it my way, but when I came home I decided it sounded so great that I'd take the risk and show it to Polwach of Perpetual Abjection. He was delighted and said he'd release it. When I told D. about this he thought I was pulling his leg. To record my very first wall and get it released on such label is an accomplishment I take much pride in to this day. Later I'd visit Przemek once or twice in Warsaw, but I was unable to quickly record anything near that level again.

Another big date was April 2024. But what was between those years? Honestly, not much - the truth is, after I came back home, I forgot how Przemek made walls in that DAW so for the next 3 years not much happened. I'd ask Przemek a couple of times if he could give me remote lessons on how to make HNW in that DAW but he said I gotta figure it out myself. Time only showed he was right... in April 2024, I had a period of NEETing and one day I decided I'd learn the process and eventually found a 7-minute tutorial on YouTube where a guy showed steps on how to create noise similar to vinyl crackle commonly heard in lo-fi hip-hop beats. I watched it and realised it was almost the same way Przemek would make his HNW (naturally I mean only the basis of the method). From that moment, I could finally create music in the genre that I love so much; that's why I find April 2024 to be the date of the real beginning of the Olion project.

M[m]: What to see as some of the key themes behind your work?

Olek I can't think of any key elements because I aim to capture something very abstract and intangible. On my HNW debut, you can read that it's "an aural portal to higher realms" and I'm likely trying to continuously recreate these "portals". I'm fond of all things magical and bewitching. I'm trying to evoke the "lunar" energies - the ecstatic, colourful and mesmerizing. Subjects on my releases are varied - one time it's a cat looking into the camera lens, which gives off a spiritual guide kind of vibe; other time it's a quotation from a film that made an impact on me.

M[m]: You come from Olsztyn- is this a town or city, and what’s it like?

Olek Olsztyn is a city in the north-east of Poland populated by 200k people - you can say it's a medium-sized city. Unluckily, in my enduring observation, I can easily say there aren't really many opportunities for young people. I have friends who despite having majored in respectable studies ended up behind the cash. For one job that offers more than the minimum wage are hundreds if not thousands of eager candidates. It's just not feasible. The most optimal plan is to either get a degree, or training and find work elsewhere.

M[m]: Is there an experimental/ underground music scene in Olsztyn?

Olek Sadly there isn't, at least any that I'd be aware of. I sometimes think it'd be cool to organise an industrial/noise fest but as of now there are no such opportunities. As far as alternative and niche music events in Olsztyn go, there were a couple of neat gigs by Stara Rzeka, Złota Jesień, Vysoke Celo, We Will Fail or RSS B0YS - all of which I highly recommend checking - but in the past few years there hasn't been one niche concert in Olsztyn.

M[m]: You’ve got some live shows coming up- please take a little bit about how you hope to play these out? And what kit will you be using?

Olek As I answer this question I'd already had my live debut - on May 29th, I performed at Defibrylator Festival in Antonin and I deem that show a success. The festival was fantastic - one of the best experiences in my life. Amazing people and amazing music. Frankly speaking, I wouldn't have had guts to play there if Sado Rituals and Silver Dove hadn't confirmed their participation. Fun fact: I'd been invited to the festival since 2015 - times when I'd record crude amateur stuff that nobody heard of. I'd always decline because I didn't feel ready - eventually the fated day came though... For the live, I prepared 10 minutes of fairly relaxing wall, which ever so slightly evolved over time, with reversed liturgical choirs that I sampled from the film "Eyes Wide Shut". The original mix can be found on my bandcamp. I'd obsess over the reception because: my show was the last one, before me Sado Rituals would have his killer live, and I played from my laptop. Beside the track I didn't have any performance prepared- hence it was all about the music there. Luckily it was received very well. The following day, I could watch all the other shows knowing that it was all behind...

M[m]: As you’ve been involved in the scene for six or so years now, how do you feel has changed/ develop, both positively and negatively?

Olek I feel that the HNW scene is long past its heyday. It seems to have been most prolific in 2016-2018, when labels such as Ominous Recordings, Fall Into Void Recs, Lost Light Records or Altar Of Waste would churn out one amazing release after another. I say it cautiously because I had yet to become such a wallhead, watching it from a distance instead. But I remember that back then, a highly anticipated limited edition HNW tape would sell out over a night. Now it often takes months. Many ambitious projects eventually threw the towel in seeing as the enthusiasm had faded - others put out material sporadically. I also get the feeling that the rise of AI was the final blow - and it's reflected in the way my music's viewed. In 2024, I would record objectively worse material, yet I had higher listen count than now. There is considerable rotation, and I'm not surprised - even when the music is great, artists know that very few people care, so they give up on their projects. It pains me terribly. Lately, research was carried out which showed that 97% of the surveyed could not tell a difference between a genuine piece of music and an AI-generated track. It's becoming more prevalent that you can find AI-generated cover art on small and bigger labels alike. Apparenly, people no longer have standards for art in general...

M[m]: What’s next for Olion ?

Olek New material is coming out soon on the Thai 静 (sei). I don't have any other plans for the time being.

Thanks for the interview.

Big thanks to Olek for his time & effort with the interview. The project's Bandcamp can be found here https://olionele.bandcamp.com/music