CategoryReviews

Traczyk strips the bass from its lyricism; instead of looking for melodies and pleasant sounds, he opts for the heaviness. Here he is drawling out sounds and trying to tame the mighty-sounding wooden giant.

From Durban’s GQOM, through an acid-fuelled soundtrack to winter, to Polish retromania from the 90s. – I’ve compiled a selection of music that is danceable, fun, and many more things to boot.

Pleasant, casual meetings usually bring the best results. But sometimes things can go a bit revolutionary too. Here are the most interesting jazz and jazz-like albums of the last weeks and the start of a new series: The Magnificent 7.

“Rastilho” is a personal comment on the contemporary world, the simplest possible gesture: reaching for an instrument, playing, and looking towards the samba tradition to make a contemporary statement about Brazil under Bolsonaro’s rule.

Throughout forty minutes, Horse Lords combines microtonal harmonies, polyrhythms, minimalism, mathematical structures, dance potential and an algorithmic approach that sometimes reminds me of the Orange Milk roster.

Alabaster DePlume takes the suitcase labelled “jazz” on a trip around the globe. He opens it up in various corners of the world – for forty minutes, we delve into melodies as if taken straight from the Ethiopiques stage, set sail for the Far East and towards Japanese Min’yo folk, only to return to Europe along the path of Celtic music.

On “Nigunim” Bastarda lead us through their world with profound reverence, far away from the profane, maintaining the narrative potential of the nigunim. Yet the most important thing is that they are able to convey the full emotional load of this timeless music in their own inimitable style.

Exotic, surreal and full of contrasts: “Sea to Sea” sounds like a tale from the Atlantis, demonstrating the uniqueness of Sign Libra’s musical language.

Lonker See’s “Hamza” shows an entirely new side of the band – yet one that’s entirely consistent with their earlier work. In turn, while the meeting of three musicians from Bydgoszcz is no less surprising, the result is completely different to what they’ve been doing so far.

On Survival Kit, the ensemble led by Szymon Gąsiorek, one of the most interesting young composers of the moment, presents an attractive follow-up to ideas from their debut album. It is a tumultuous, complex story that utilizes a number of intriguing solutions.