There are soundscapes that invite you in, guiding you gently through their contours. And then there are soundscapes that engulf you, that pull you into a labyrinth of texture, resonance, and the mechanical hum of unseen processes. "Environmental Practice: Resin Arpeggio", the latest work from Polish sound artist Jacek Doroszenko, falls squarely into the latter category. It is an album that does not just depict an environment - it becomes one, immersing the listener in an auditory chemistry of industry and nature, precision and entropy, control and chance.
At the heart of this project is a paradox: the imitation of natural processes by artificial means. Doroszenko’s sonic materials originate in Spolchemie, a Czech chemical factory in Ústí nad Labem, where industrial machinery hums alongside the quiet murmurs of a nearby brook, where human-made systems mimic the slow alchemy of geological time. With the help of field recordist Jan Krtika, he captures this environment not as a passive observer, but as a composer who allows the space itself to perform.
The album is structured as three extended movements, each a variation on the central theme of "Resin Arpeggio" - a phrase that evokes both the technical precision of synthetic production and the slow, organic seepage of tree sap. The first movement unfurls gradually, layering drones, modulated synth tones, and found objects into a dense, shifting atmosphere. Metallic echoes fold into each other, mechanical clatter gives way to strange harmonics, and what initially seems random begins to coalesce into a form - an arpeggio of frequencies, not plucked on a piano, but played by reverberations in air, by the very architecture of the space.
The second movement introduces more deliberate rhythmic pulses, though these are not beats in any conventional sense. Instead, they emerge like the ghostly residue of industrial repetition - the sound of valves opening and closing, of liquid moving through unseen pipes, of machines caught in the act of breathing. Occasionally, a harmonic shimmer rises to the surface, offering fleeting moments of clarity before being swallowed back into the mass of undulating sound.
By the third movement, something uncanny happens: the once-disjointed elements begin to feel like an ecology, a self-sustaining system of sound. Here, Doroszenko’s approach recalls the psychoacoustic experiments of Bernard Parmegiani or the textural intricacies of Alvin Lucier - music that is less about linear progression and more about the experience of inhabiting a sonic space.
Doroszenko’s work has always been about the intersection of sound, space, and perception. He is less interested in melody or rhythm than in how we hear, in the way environments shape their own auditory signatures. "Resin Arpeggio" is an exercise in deep listening, rewarding those willing to slow down, to allow the details to emerge in their own time.
Yet, for all its industrial roots, there is something profoundly organic about this album. The hum of pipes is no different from the song of cicadas; the percussive clatter of metal no different from falling rain. And perhaps that is the most unsettling aspect of "Environmental Practice: Resin Arpeggio" - not the machinery itself, but the realization that its rhythms, its repetitions, its slow accumulations of matter and motion, are not so different from those of the natural world.
As resin binds materials together, so too does this album bind the mechanical to the organic, the artificial to the elemental, the past to the future. And in doing so, it asks us to reconsider what is truly natural in an era where human intervention is as much a part of the landscape as wind, water, or stone.
So step inside this world of humming circuits and unseen laboratories. Let the reverberations guide you. And listen - not just to what is played, but to the spaces in between.
Score: 92/100 - best experienced in headphones, or in a factory at midnight.