DCF Cinema & Gothic Hall, Wroclaw, Poland16th to 19th October 2025
XXIV Wroclaw Industrial Festival Day 4 with SLPWK, Moan, Düsseldorf
The final night turned the volume inward. SLPWK approached modular improvisation as both discipline and risk, shaping live sequences that balanced tight control with subtle instability. MOAN followed with meditative ambient-industrial soundscapes, all drones and drifting textures, folding the room into a state of almost complete stillness. DÜSSELDORF closed the festival with a set that nodded to the city’s electronic heritage while keeping its gaze firmly on the present.
Motorik foundations, precise percussion, and restrained, melancholic melodies turned the Gothic Hall into a kind of moving blueprint - minimal, articulate, and deeply human. As the last echoes faded, what remained was not spectacle, but presence: four days of sound, ideas, and bodies occupying the same charged space. The XXIV Wroclaw Industrial Festival once again confirmed its identity - less as an event in the calendar and more as an ongoing conversation about what industrial art can still say in a restless world.
SLPWK
SLPWK is a Polish modular artist and improviser whose work explores the meeting point of rhythm, minimalism, and abstraction. His performances are built on live modular synthesis - structures evolving in real time, balancing control and spontaneity. Focused on process and presence, SLPWK turns improvisation into a ritual of precision, tension, and release.
Music & Performance
SLPWK’s set at the Wroclaw Industrial Festival confirmed everything he said in the interview I conducted for AlterNation.eu - that improvisation, when treated as both discipline and risk, can transform sound into ritual. It was a dynamic and intelligent performance, marked by clarity, restraint, and a quiet kind of power. Working entirely with his modular system, SLPWK sculpted rhythm like a craftsman shaping metal - deliberate, precise, yet open to the unpredictable.
The set pulsed with raw energy, but never lost its composure. Every modulation felt intentional, every distortion controlled, creating a tension that made the room breathe differently. There was no spectacle, no pre-programmed comfort zone - only the fragile balance between control and surrender. The Eurorack became an extension of his body, turning sound into movement, feedback into thought. It was industrial techno reduced to essence: direct, minimal, alive.
Just as he said in the interview, SLPWK approached the stage as a space of encounter - an exchange of energy, not performance. The audience responded instinctively, drawn into that rhythm until it became collective. What remained was not melody but moment: atmosphere and energy, as he predicted.It was a concert that reminded us how far honesty can go when precision meets risk. Smart, restrained, and fearless, SLPWK proved that true intensity doesn’t shout; it listens.
Moan
The long-running Ambient-Industrial project of Rafał Sądej, MOAN has been a quiet force in Poland’s experimental scene since the mid-1990s. Blending field recordings, drones, and processed acoustics, MOAN builds meditative soundscapes that explore space, decay, and memory. His music occupies the space between composition and installation, where each tone becomes an act of introspection.
Music & Performance
Where others explode outward, MOAN draws you inward. Rafał Sądej’s long-standing project has been shaping the language of Polish Ambient-Industrial for nearly three decades, and his performance at WIF 2025 was among the most captivating of the festival, an experience closer to painting than to performance. Using a palette of drones, field recordings, digital manipulations, and resonant objects, MOAN created exquisite, ephemeral soundscapes that seemed to hover between dream and memory. Each tone felt like a breath caught in slow motion, every reverberation a ripple through invisible matter. It was not a show of spectacle, but of concentration - of listening as an act of devotion.
The venue transformed into a vast resonant chamber, where metallic echoes intertwined with warm, acoustic undertones. At times it felt as though the walls themselves were exhaling; at others, the sound condensed into single crystalline tones that trembled on the edge of silence. The audience stood motionless, as if afraid to disturb the fragile geometry of the moment. What made MOAN’s set extraordinary was its precision - its quiet power. It reminded everyone present that industrial music doesn’t always have to scream to be overwhelming. Sometimes, it whispers - and that whisper contains entire worlds.
Düsseldorf
Founded by Tom Axer and Leander Roenick, DÜSSELDORF draws inspiration from the minimalist precision of the city’s electronic heritage while shaping a modern, emotionally charged form of motorik electronica. Combining rhythmic discipline with melodic restraint, the project reimagines the Düsseldorf school aesthetic for the contemporary stage - precise, melancholic, and profoundly human.
Music & Performance
Some musical connections begin unexpectedly and linger long after the sound fades. My story with DÜSSELDORF started with a single track that found its way into my headphones months ago. It carried that unmistakable pulse of the Düsseldorf school - disciplined rhythm, clean geometry, and a sense of restrained melancholy that feels both mechanical and human. What began as discovery soon turned into dialogue: long exchanges, an in-depth interview for Reflections of Darkness, and a shared fascination with structure, tone, and legacy.
Seeing the project live at the XXIV Wroclaw Industrial Festival felt like watching that conversation come alive. Tom Axer, performing solo as DÜSSELDORF, took the stage without his collaborator Leander Roenick, whose absence was certainly felt. Yet what Axer accomplished alone was nothing short of impressive - a demonstration of precision, vision, and self-assured minimalism. Surrounded only by cables, synths, and a few carefully chosen lights, he commanded the Gothic Hall with control and quiet authority.The set was like an act of architectural composition: layers built with intention, form following rhythm, and space treated as an instrument in itself.
The motorik foundations of DÜSSELDORF’s sound were unmistakable, yet Axer infused them with his own sense of tension and momentum. Each sequence moved with mechanical certainty yet clear emotional undertone; every modulation arrived exactly when it needed to. What struck most was the coherence - no filler, no indulgence, only focus. The basslines were taut, percussion economical, melodies sculpted with surgical precision. Instead of relying on spectacle or theatricality, Axer chose a subtler path: music as design, restraint as power.
The result was immersive and deeply satisfying, a reminder that sophistication can hit just as hard as volume.As the final echoes faded and the venue sank into darkness, what lingered wasn’t exhaustion but reverence. Four nights of ceremony, rebellion, and revelation had once again transformed Wroclaw into a living instrument - a place where noise became meaning and silence turned sacred.
Setlist
01. Gestalt part 3
02. Tokyo Rose
03. Dreamtime
04. Ockham’s Razor
05. Viamala
06. A curse
07. Goddess of War
The XXIV Wroclaw Industrial Festival left behind more than memories; it left a vibration, something that will hum quietly beneath the city’s surface until the next ignition. The air still carries traces of Metal and light, of voices that refused to vanish, of artists who dared to stretch sound beyond its breaking point. This festival has never been about nostalgia - it’s about presence.
About facing the noise and finding the human pulse inside it. And as the final lights dimmed, one truth remained clear: the machine-heart of Wroclaw keeps beating, steady and strong. The XXV Jubilee Edition will take place from 5th to 8th November 2026. Until then - keep listening, keep questioning, keep the signal alive. https://www.industrialart.eu
All Pictures by Karo Kratochwil
