Two more pieces in the Genetic Transmission jigsaw have come to light…I have been diligently following the GT Archive Series, a reissue programme with which this label doggedly maintains the back catalogue of Tomasz Twardawa, a prominent musician in the electro-acoustic and musique concrète genres in Poland, though with his own very idiosyncratic approach to tape manipulation and a decidedly dark and visceral dimension to his themes and ideas.
My Inspiration Is You (ZOHARUM ZOHAR 357-2) may sound like the title of a Julie London album, but rest assured this grim concoction is quite some way from a collection of torchy ballads and wistful sentiments. In fact it’s brewed from a combination of “fury, pain and hatred”, according to its creator, doubtless alluding to an array of confusing negative emotions suffered by him, which can only find expression in this sort of gnarled, ugly, lumpy, audio outpouring. I seem to recall on previous releases, Genetic Transmission has revealed that he used metal objects, field recordings and treated voices to produce his outlandish sounds, but this might be the first time he’s admitted to the unhealthy stew of mental states that afflict him personally, weaving them into the fabric of his concoctions through some unknown mystical process.
I see he’s even included a couple of voice samples from the Eraserhead movie on two tracks; admittedly the work of David Lynch has long since passed out of “cult movie” status and is now embraced by every disaffected soul from the five corners of the world who can’t wait to explain it to us, but it’s good that Twardawa is able to give us a tangible reference point. I sense that his take on the movie – whose interpretations are legion, to put it mildly – is to see it as a very extreme statement on isolation and alienation, a desperate quest for identity in a world that doesn’t care who you are. It’s that particular subtext which is somehow emerging from today’s spin of these ghastly, shiversome drones… Genetic Transmission has been much more violent, and almost pathological in his plan to destroy the human race one cell at a time, but My Inspiration Is You is as silent and deadly as an army of poisonous snakes slithering towards you across the tiled floor. As such, it’s probably the most unsettling and desolate item we’ve heard from his catalogue.
The record was originally released in 2004 on his own Die Schöne Blumen Musik Werk label, and the original CDR package was swaddled in bandages, as if reminding us that everyone in the human race is but a “mummy, possessed” (to use a phrase from John Donne). That 2004 original was limited, and isn’t especially rare, but even so it’s very good to acquire this rebaked version. (22/10/2025)