“I want the music to go through extreme levels of discomfort and darkness, and I think again about aftercare following these moments. I try to show people the darkest part of themselves and make them feel good about it — and that translates to all parts of my practices.”
Oliwia Radomska | Aithō
Oliwia Radomska is a composer, producer and DJ based in Warsaw and London, making music under the moniker Aithō. Aithō creates uncompromising immersive raves, installations and concert pieces between cinematic, concert hall and club contexts; exploring volcanic pyroclastic flow, forces of rebellion, hazy wormholes of ambient, power and freedom working with visual media, film and installation. Her practice spans from composing for martial arts, extreme sports, and horror movies, to DJ’ing around venues in London and Warsaw. Oliwia’s work has included arrangements for UKF Orchestrave at Barbican Concert Hall, techno sets at Arch Fest Birmingham, The Cause in London, Transformator and STK47 in Poland, as well as Sensorium in her recent Berlin debut. Her audiovisual work includes shows at Milton Court, and live instrument arrangements at the National Gallery, Barbican Cinema, and Science Gallery, among others. As both a pianist and composer, Oliwia undertook an undergrad in Music Composition & Creative Technology at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama before studying Electronic and Produced Music at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, later becoming a fellow between 2023-2024.
Oliwia is currently composer in residence at her martial arts gym as well as a resident DJ at Sinthesis collective in Warsaw. Georgie West discusses Oliwia’s plans for her multi-part installation Salome, as well as sonically reflecting the intensity of extreme sports, industrial techno, club after-care, and human nature…
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Georgie/PRXLUDES: What was it that led you to music and subsequently the different strands of your practice?
Oliwia Radomska: It was very clear that I would do music since I was a kid. I can’t explain it — it’s like it chose me. It was so obvious to me since as long as I remember that I will be a composer; it was some kind of divine calling. I was really inspired by a lot of film scores, and it felt like this is something that I wanted to do.
Firstly I really wanted to play piano. I asked my parents for a piano and my intuition was to play by ear, write stuff, and make things up. Then I went through classical piano education in Poland. At first I went to a local private school, but after that it became clear that music was what I wanted to pursue. They wanted to make sure I was serious about it, and I had to prove myself by getting into a state school. In my case it was one of the big three in Warsaw — Bednarska, founded by Chopin’s teacher. It was a big test, because at first [my] parents warned me about being a musician; when I was around 12, [I] started to make it clear that this was what I wanted. They were worried I was going to change my mind and I was so upset, I cried day and night till they let me apply for state school. I was practicing all year, even with headphones on — sometimes listening to death metal because I couldn’t bear to listen to Mozart having played it so many times! I then got into the school, and was one of ten people at that time that got in from the whole country.
After such a classical start to your musical journey, at what point did electronic music become something you were interested in exploring?
I stayed there for a few years, and I got a little bit into jazz and then into electronic music. What got me into electronic music was Sławomir Wojciechowski and Monika Lech, who took us to Warsaw Autumn — a contemporary music festival in Poland — and this was the first time I had heard contemporary and new music. Actually the first concert we heard was a Merzbow noise concert (I think I still have tinnitus from that concert… -laughs-). It just shifted my perception because I saw all the furniture in the room move because of sound, even though it was completely pitch black — and I knew that that was what I wanted to keep exploring with electronics. I was so shocked I genuinely couldn’t hear anything for around 3 days!
Then from that point I found out a lot about contemporary composers. [I] was really influenced by Ligeti — but also was listening to dubstep so much. I was a proper UKF kid and metalhead. I always had all kinds of dubstep and metal in my headphones. Then one day I accidentally clicked on some Berghain set by Krashkee and the techno cell was sparked.
I never thought I would be a DJ around 15… sort of peak teenage crisis age. I was fully committed to bands and obscure contemporary pieces — as well as sentimental Rachmaninov. Then I went to Point Blank in London to learn Logic Pro X, and at this point I didn’t even know how to turn on a Macbook… and from there I got into music production.
During my piano studies in Poland I would do music production, live electronics, and film scores for friends on the side. I would play at school music festivals, but I decided that the life of a concert pianist wasn’t completely aligned with me. I just couldn’t survive practicing for six, eight hours per day. I was juggling the decision as to whether I would stay a few years longer with the piano and apply for competitions and teach, stay in Poland to study composition, or study composition in the UK. After applying to some conservatoires in the UK, I chose to study composition at Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.
I came to Cardiff and saw the amazing synthesisers that the department had — they generally had an impressive electronic music background. At that point, John Hardy and Odilon Marcenaro [were] at the Royal Welsh, and I felt such a spark from them. It was a perfect mix of contemporary classical and electronics for me. Owen Lloyd was one of our professors, and he was showing us everything — from David Lynch movies, to insane electronic musicians and sound design. It helped me realise that music is something that I will do lifelong, and I have all the time in the world because I do this full time.
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I was also interested in your work for scoring for martial arts and winter sports which you also engage with yourself. Can you tell me more about this side of your practice and how extra-musical influences inspire you?
I’m quite a sporty person for some reason. I wonder how many hours I’ve spent in a practice room, not aware of the physical impact of it. I feel like someone should have talked to me about movement awareness and supplementation — I now take creatine and my musical performance, as well as mental health, has improved so much.
I am part of a fight club — Copacabana, in Warsaw — where I meet athletes regularly. Their schedule is identical to a musician’s in terms of practice. Many tell musicians to treat muscles gently, don’t work out too much in the gym, fix your back, avoid sports etc. — but I think it’s almost butchery for students’ bodies. We need more workouts for artists, tailored to their safety and practice. I used to also be very serious about skiing, and was trying to race in giant slalom alongside piano. I kept hiding that from my piano teacher at the time. The secret skier life was very intense! Now I enjoy occasional freeride on recreational trips, with insurance and preparation of course.
I just loved watching sports videos. It felt natural to get into scoring them because when I would be skiing or climbing myself, I would picture what kind of music would be super epic for that moment. When I was racing — but also during powder days with insane conditions — it felt like something that was so artistic for me. Survival conditions really inspire me, especially climbing in “bad” weather. I love when sports get a little bit extreme. I love the adrenaline, and this is what often pushes me to write music. Athletes are normally the customers to the brands we are making the videos for — with items like goggles, skis, etc. — and I want them to feel like they are the person in the video, and fall in love with their sport all over again thanks to my score.
How would you say the sports, or the inspiration you take from them, informs your compositional process in scoring for these types of videos?
I have so many different approaches to scoring them. Often very violent things like jiu-jitsu, wrestling, and boxing, feel like they need an epic score — but actually these are very intimate sports. I fell in love with jiu-jitsu so much. Sometimes in jiu-jitsu, time actually feels like it slows down. I’ve been kindly asked by the team at Manto to help out with music for some videos, and it’s been flowing since then. I feel very privileged to create a musical score for clips featuring true legends of the sport, who I am honoured to call friends. Sometimes I visit open mats as an observer, looking at fights to get me to hear what I need to write.
Harmonic progressions often come to me intuitively, and it feels like a spiritual experience beyond sound or the tonal system that we know. The way the momentum of the fight moves, and one situation moves to another and then they combine together… There is friction and then there is resolution. It all feels very musical for me. I then shape them within the tonal system which works well for the audience. Especially with jujitsu; I like to capture the poetry of it. It’s a very collaborative sport, and it looks very violent, but actually the more confident the two people roll with each other, the safer it feels, at least for me. It’s like two life forces creating a third one.
We pioneered a jiu-jitsu rave at Copacabana — which has turned into a cyclical event with a new edition coming soon. It started when I noticed that both the gym and the mat play really great techno during workouts and classes. I couldn’t help but dance a bit during warmups in class. The playlists often motivated me to show up. Then one night my friend and I set up the speakers and my controller in the closed gym, found some lights — and we got a few rolls in. It was such a profound experience, and energy was through the roof. The same happened during the event — some people got twice as many rounds as usual with less tiredness. I curated the playlist carefully, making sure drops match the rounds timer as close as possible and to include Copacabana favourites. I recently brought my controller to sparring classes — to see if it’s possible to switch between DJing and jiu-jitsu rounds. I noticed that it’s quite hard — I am very careful about my arms then, to make sure I can keep DJing, which makes the rounds less intense.
My favourite thing in sport is the moment of slight ego death, and that feels like the bit I want to score the most. Fighting, climbing, skiing can have very humbling moments; there’s a calmness where your soul finds some sort of truth, usually in crisis, where you have to be really honest to yourself and submit. I definitely score the submission more in sports than any other kind of power-play. I don’t think about textbook “trailer structure”, as I find that narrative quite limiting and not always accurate to human condition. Sometimes it all just comes when I observe the fights and look for the most human part of it all. Usually the videos are around 15 seconds at most, so you have to get a lot in a very short period of time — sometimes even 5 seconds. But with the martial art timeline, so much can happen in those 15 seconds on the mat. I think about the most divine moment of these sports and score that.
I find that the most climbing in difficult weather. There is something spiritual about cold rocks covered in rain, accepting your fate and letting the pain set a rhythm of your further journey. Sitting on the summit ridge of Skrajny Granat recently, in an abyss of clouds, cemented my goal to complete the entire Orla Perć, one of the most iconic trails in Poland. It sparked many new musical ideas in my heart.
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Can you elaborate on the similarities and differences between your writing processes for notated and electronic music?
I’m in love with graphic scores, and I’m in love with never stopping myself when it comes to achieving the most abstract sound that I want with instruments. I used to like to paint scores and write by hand on manuscript paper, but that part of my practice ended up being for my own self-expression and wasn’t always the most practical for recording music — there is such a little amount of time in those scenarios, that I can’t risk someone misunderstanding my score. My world of scoring at Royal Welsh was a lot more abstract — mostly inspired by Ligeti’s, Crumb’s graphic scores, or aleatoric works of Cage — it felt like an academic process and exploration. But then when I came to Guildhall, there were so many opportunities to write for real musicians, that I just had to prioritise engraving in a way that will make musicians produce the sound I look for instantly and comfortably. It was a case of: how do I keep the sound of those extended practices which people achieve so well when they’re given artistic freedom and not lose it with the score being as legible as possible.
When I know I am going to be working with a real person, I never start with MIDI. I never want to hear anything before being in the room. I am inviting a lot of human error, as that’s what I am interested in. I prefer to conduct what really happens in front of me, rather than a fantasy I have in my head. I fully trust my players with their instrument. I was usually conducting my own work, and I had the opportunity to vocalise what I wanted; I wanted every player to use their experience and their own intuition to search for the sound I wanted to achieve. As a performer too, I’m very happy when the composer at least tries to understand me. It goes both ways.
You also DJ at raves and live shows with your creative persona, Aithō — do you feel your creative persona differs between your live practice and your composed practice?
The name Aithō comes from Greek to burn, and allegedly is the ancient name etymology for [the] Etna volcano. I’ve been obsessed with volcanoes since childhood and considered a volcanologist path. I relate closely to their temper; [the] forces of creation and destruction combined. The sensory-deprived shadowland they create reminds me of how the aftermath of grief, or rage, feels to me. I love to explore the ashy silence and suffocating pain of it. I quickly identified with Etna — it felt like I met a woman so powerful yet so tender. When she destroys, it’s art. You know she is hard to reach, but she silently invites you to be close with her warmth, hoping you won’t find her terrifying.
I also wear antlers when I DJ. I’m very connected to the forest in daily life. I feel like I am this mythical creature when I play — and I think it makes people immediately trust me and let go, because they are looking at a girl wearing antlers, blasting industrial and it’s like “who cares”. I don’t feel human at all. Many ravers noticed the correlation of antlers with Leszy — the Slavic deity of the forest and hunting, in some areas also treated as a ruler of the dead.
I love techno, I love going to raves. I started to DJ in Guildhall because there was a DJ booth and [it] felt like everyone knew how to do it… I’m quite competitive, so [I] wanted to learn too! It felt like the decks were so simple compared to working in Ableton in terms of parameters, but I couldn’t figure them out at all. Thanks to the patience of my friend, Ell Weavers, I was able to finally crack it. Coming from the spoilt film world where every effect is at our fingertips, it was a real strip[ping] piece of tech to work with. I loved hard techno, and the more industrial side of things, but also had a moment where I liked minimal, hypnotic — the slower techno ruling Berghain, for example — which is a really beautiful style of techno.
I started to play at venues that I used to play at as a sound artist — that’s how I got into playing live. Then I put on my own events too; a lot of clubs in London and Birmingham have a great DJ setup, I was able to experience that there. Now that I am resident in Sinthesis collective in Warsaw, I started to play in really beautiful clubs with great soundsystems in Poland too. I discovered that there’s so many more mixers and CDJs, which I love to explore in the studio; each of them offers a different narrative of mixing. My favourites are Allen & Heath Xone:92, Xone:96, as well as [the] Pioneer DJM V10. I practice on anything I can get my hands on — I especially like experimenting with older gear.
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Do you feel a kind of connection with the audience that you potentially don’t always get when composing?
I feel like DJ’ing is a lot more personal than composing sometimes, as I really get to interact with the crowd [in real-time] and fulfill their needs. Composing to me is a much more separate and often solitary, almost lonely practice. I am often buried in gear or scores in my bedroom or studio. But with DJ’ing,you and the crowd are one — it’s much more similar to conducting than composing.
My set isn’t structured like a piece would be. I am mostly interested in empathy as a DJ: I like being able to work out what the crowd needs during my sets, and in that sense live sets are quite unstructured, compared to techno podcast releases. I like to prioritise keeping people in the room rather than my specific artistic visions, and focus on dancing as a meditative practice. Obviously, substance culture is huge — and it’s hard to relate to that when you are sober — but that is one of the challenges and important factors. I want people to leave the club and feel like “what the hell just happened?”, and I don’t have to hold back at all. I will never play what other DJs will like, because they aren’t the ones dancing!
I’m very attentive when I pick tracks. Sometimes I don’t work so hard with the mixing because I want to have a lot of time to really connect with the crowd, catch eye contact, smile. The most important thing for me is to have fun, to make friends, and to empower people with my sets — so when people leave the club they feel stronger. Dj’ing is a very intense world, and it’s important to take breaks and value your health too. Club culture is about survival too, in a way: the structure of the night really interests me, especially the “evil hours” around 4am. I usually play at these times, and often I’m in charge of closing every emotion from the night. I do go to the club at the start, before closing because I want to assess and feel what the crowd are feeling — I will usually take a nap and then come back for my set.
What is it about DJ’ing “evil hours” closing sets that inspires you, and how do you practice these levels of darkness and aftercare?
I find it very important to take people out into daylight, because they are going through levels of darkness. Often, the drugs are structuring the scene, and that’s not something you can ignore; 4am is usually where people have run out of drugs, they are reaching some comedowns, and they are searching for something. I like to cater to offering some sort of aftercare. Aftercare can include pure violence… -laughs- Because that gives them a chance to just really let go because that’s often the healthiest thing you can do.
I adjust my BPM for this, and I’m playing 160, 180 or even 200 at this point — sometimes I’m playing so fast that they just stop moving. They still get the intensity, but they don’t feel like they are missing out because it is physically impossible; it gives them the opportunity to expand energy but also not spiral into a physical comedown. One of the ravers messaged me recently to say that “I broke her heart and then pieced it together into the correct shape” — explained how emotional and full of context the closing felt to her.
But, it’s not all about adults. Recently I brought my newest live act to a charity festival for Siemacha. When I arrived, I learnt that kids there found my Instagram and demanded super hard techno, since none of them were allowed to go to clubs yet. I ended up playing a few hours extra — first the giant audiovisual show, which they loved too — and later I obliged with a real techno set. I managed to make special club visuals in the hotel quickly too. All [the] adults ran away after the first track, and more children ran to the main tent for the rave. It was probably the happiest techno memory of my year. The technicians had so much fun too.
I think being in Poland more, some of my Slavic ancestry has woken up. I play a lot of Bochka, which is a very intense style of industrial techno — the name comes from hitting a barrel because the Russian word for barrel is бочка. It’s my main style right now. I also like to combine the violent kicks with my film soundtracks. I do bring my scores into the club, I bring a lot of classical music to the club, and every time it gives my sets a really spiritual vibe. It has a divine and contemplative factor to it that I think often gets lost in the concert hall as audiences can be quite analytical; but it has a real beauty in the club, and conjures such a simple feeling of relief suddenly. The classical concert hall experience I can think of where people truly let go is honestly when I watched Shostakovich 5 at the Barbican Hall — everyone was singing along and the boundaries just got blurred.
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Your work Salome explores the story of Salome and the Akkadian myth of The Descent of Ishtar to the Netherworld. It is a long form work and has been screened for between 4 and 11 hours. What was it like to create something of longer duration, that is very narrative-led — and how did you expand on your musical explorations in Volume 2?
I wanted to visit the story of Salome after watching the David McVicar production. There is a moment at the end where she gets killed, but as she gets killed, there is a split second of a smile. This smile was so deep for me because it felt very intentional. It got me thinking about the archetype of women who smile when they are dying and who are happy to leave the world they’re in. Aside from my own experience of feeling inadequate in my femininity, I researched women from serial killers to mythical creatures — I found that the most powerful feminine trait was just being unapologetically yourself, and unapologetically contradicting and authentic. I struggled to read the Oscar Wilde play, because the way she was written felt male-centric to me. I wanted to make a story that shows the journey of femininity.
The structure of my piece Salome – Vol 1: Afterlife was split into my subjective view of the story: Earth, 7 Gates of Hell, Underworld, 7 Gates of Hell, and then Earth again. It was around a 20 minute piece that got looped for hours at a time. I do try to steer away from the linearity of structured forms; I wanted people to walk into the installation and make them feel like they are in Hell with her, and that there are different sides of it — it doesn’t have to be evil, it can also be relaxed, since it’s final and infinite. Salome often refers to it as the Netherworld — a world of nothing — and I think that is so peaceful, where hitting rock bottom is actually a very freeing existence. I didn’t mind how long the audience stayed there: if people stayed for 5 minutes and got something then I would be happy. Some people stayed for around 5 hours, and there was no rush in how long they were trying to find something.
This feels similar to the club culture I was talking about. It’s the idea of the loss of time. Time isn’t measured in hours and minutes, but in DJ sets and drops — and in installations it’s the same: time is measured in light streaks or hits of bass. I enjoyed creating a safe space for people to be the darkest version of themselves.
The musical material in Salome – Vol 1: Afterlife and second one, Salome – Total Immersion, consisted of takes from live orchestral recordings, blended with electronic treatment. ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’ inspired ‘Blood and Tears, Let me Dance’ in Volume I. For me, dropping the veils was about shedding layers of generational requirements for women — and the violence presented, for me, is the most intense act of love. I really enjoyed creating a testament for a really “difficult” female who I wanted people to see as complex and beautiful rather than demonising her. The lyrics in that track talk a lot about possession, contradicting feelings of love and female experience. I searched for sounds of Hell, love, death, ashy landscapes, in a way that can be accessible to understand.
The first Salome [Vol. 1] was about bleeding out and the second Salome [Total Immersion] was about bleeding in. Both iterations have a strong film score atmosphere, a journey, an intense orchestral hybrid score with electronics. For the second iteration, we made part of the basement in the Barbican into a rave scene and installation — so many worlds were existing next to one another. There was no projection, since action was happening live in person. Thanks to winning the [Guildhall] Undisciplined grant, we were able to set up proper club lighting and [a] D&B sound system. We kindly coordinated our show next to opera rehearsals in the Silk Street orchestra pit next door. I would love to make a third iteration — which would be a much larger scale format.
I started with the orchestra for both Salome’s; and pictured scenes in my head, started to plan how it sounds when someone submits to death — or how it sounds when someone is happy to cross over that bridge into darkness. There’s a lot of prayers in the second Salome, about Archangel Michael’s protection from Satan. For the visuals in Volume 1, I used a lot of open source footage that I heavily edited, that would inform my musical material. I wanted the score to feel romantic, but I wanted half of the strings to be very visceral — like shattered glass in faces and walking through sandstorms. That’s what love feels like to me.
I was focused on making this piece sound like grief and memory, and the idea of shards in your heart — a blend of pure comfort, discomfort, love, and deep sadness. I want the music to go through extreme levels of discomfort and darkness, and I think again about aftercare following these moments. I try to show people the darkest part of themselves and make them feel good about it — and that translates to all parts of my practices.
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Learn more about Oliwia Radomska / Aithō and her practice:
- https://aitho.me/
- https://soundcloud.com/aithorave
- https://www.instagram.com/aitho.official/
- https://ra.co/dj/aitho
References/Links:
- Dariusz Belka, ‘ORLA PERĆ’ (2021), Komoot
- Sonia Spadaro Mulone, ‘Etna: Geology, History, Legends and Wine’ (2015), Santa Maria la Nave
- mzperx_real, ‘What is BOCHKA?’, Instagram Reels
- Shostakovich – Symphony No. 5 (1937)
- The Descent of Ishtar to the Netherworld (ca. 911-612 BC)
- Richard Strauss – Salome (1905), dir. David McVicar at the Royal Ballet & Opera (2008)
- Oscar Wilde, Salome (1893)
