The Rat Factory

The Rat Factory is a dark orchestral work, heavy, dense, and severe in its sonic language. Dissonant structures, atonal passages, massive choirs, and deeply layered clusters create an atmosphere that oscillates between brutality and a peculiar beauty.

Contrast is the work's founding principle. Between monumental passages stand quiet, restrained pieces – dark choral chant, pure piano settings, delicate and almost dancing compositions that draw their tension from interlocking structure rather than from force.

Nested patterns run beneath the surface. Filigree flute lines move through the orchestral mass – as counterpoint, as added weight, as part of the interlocking.

The album is built as a descent in five chapters. Each chapter opens with a piano piece that acts like a threshold.

In its subject matter, the work engages critically with human existence and the depths of the psyche. It takes up humankind's often unreflective way of thinking, its rush to judge others, and its tendency to regard itself as a superior species – what is deemed inferior and filthy comes to mirror one's own psyche. Yet this critique is never spelled out but sits in the work as metaphor. The world of the rat factory, the titles of its pieces, and its sonic form carry these themes as a story.

The first ideas, melodies, and the fundamental atmospheric design emerged as early as 2015, among them many of the main themes that run through the entire work. After further working phases in 2016 and 2017, the main production ran from early 2018 to mid-2019. The sonic result varies in places across the twenty-four pieces. A revision is planned.