Brzmi w Trzcinie #7: Best Polish Releases of 2024
Ranking our 13 favorite albums and EPs of the year
The way we see it, 2024 was a year brimming with an eclectic range of remarkable releases from Polish artists, from sound art to jazz to lounge to post-hardcore. What united the albums we loved most, however, was their engagement in a dialogue—with another place, another time, or both. This was evident in the works of artists like Polonez, Bahato, and Radical Polish Ansambl, who offered fresh takes on centuries-old musical customs, and Tonfa and 2K88, who openly drew inspiration from Polish hip-hop of the 90s and the aughts. Gary Gwadera entered a conversation with both Polish and American Chicago, Jantar infused their sound with influences from Brazilian MPB, Raphael Rogiński explored Lithuanian mythology, and Antonina Nowacka wove elements from her extensive travels into her work.
"Dialogue" feels like the key word here—not as cultural appropriation or a second-rate imitation of trending foreign sounds, but as genuine collaborations and heartfelt homages. These albums are bridges: thoughtful connections between traditions, eras, and geographies, showcasing how Polish music in 2024 embraced the world without departing too far from its own origins.
#13: Gary Gwadera, Far, far in Chicago. Footberg Suite (Pointless Geometry)
Drummer Piotr Gwadera’s M.O. on his debut tape for Pointless Geometry is to bring to light (and to celebrate) the unlikely commonalities between the Polish rural dance heritage and Chicago’s footwork. Unlikely, that is, until you realize that Chicago boasts a population of over 700,000 claiming Polish ancestry, and the country’s music was preserved there in both its traditional forms and as the hybrid Central European beat of polka. The connections run from those purely musical—Poland’s oberek and footwork share an incessant triple rhythm—to the fact that the cultures surrounding both styles involve battles of dancers and a keen focus on community. Using a modified jaz—a minimal drum set popular with Polish rural musician—with built-in pads that launch samples of the TR-808 and TR-908 drum machines, Gwadera delivers a live improvisation that juxtaposes breakneck speeds of footwork with the complex time signatures of oberek, while sampling the recordings of actual Polish diasporic folk ensembles. In a twist, at times the resulting mixture doesn’t resemble either footwork or oberek, but rather modern improvised music. Yet, it’s engaging just the same.—Patryk Mrozek
#12: Sw@da, MAXIM & Niczos, Bahato EP (Tańce)
“Reggaeton from eastern Poland” might look shocking on paper, and it does sound kind of shocking on record. The Polish-Colombian producer Sw@da splices Latin American dance beats with the musical tradition of the Podlasie region (itself already bordering Belarus and Lithuania and somewhat of a melting pot) without blandly blending them. Rapper MAXIM and singer Niczos seem to find themselves right at home, adding local gravitas. The 11-minute EP could be the most fun record on this list, and it also raises questions: Is this a thing now? Is there more coming?—Łukasz Konatowicz
#11: ehh hahah, nigdy nie jest dobrze (wojtek) (BFF Music)
“Producer and meme creator ehh hahah records […] glitchy electronics, haunted shopping mall keyboard tones, 16-bit JRPG soundtrack vibes, and probably a whole lot of other references that fly over my head. Now with extra chicken sounds.” —Łukasz Konatowicz; read more in BWT #6
#10: aheloy!, Deep in the Big Blue Dream (Discos Extendes)
“Deep in the Big Blue Dream is a very focused fusion of dreamy ambient and club music, made with enough precision and a light touch so that neither part overwhelms the other. […] Kolarczyk finds his very own shade of blue on this masterfully crafted and extremely listenable set of liquid tracks.”—Łukasz Konatowicz; read more in BWT #3
#9: SSRI, SSRI (Pointless Geometry)
“Their music is often described as a genre of underwater reggae, likely influenced by the distinctive industrial sound of Łódź and a heavy use of reverb effects,” says the Bandcamp page for the debut album by the duo SSRI (Sandra Mikołajczyk and Igor Gadomski). Now, I've never actually been to Łódź in central Poland—a fact that comes to my mind more often than you'd think—I just keep hearing peculiar things about it. Often conflicting things. The “industrial” part seems to be the one certain fact. With my scant, largely fictionalized knowledge of the place, I TOTALLY believe in its influence on SSRI—a fuzzy, wobbly record threaded with dub but unafraid to ask questions like “What if Alice Coltrane soundtracked a Tarkovsky film in the 1970s?”
It's the kind of record that easily defeats describing it in many words. Just look at the jokey titles like “BEEEEEEAT” or “OMBIENT”—the artists know it best themselves. SSRI seem to make music outside of what most of us consider as “meaning” or “narrative” and instead search for the pure thrill of SOUND. The search often leads them outside of musical conventions, but I'm not sure “experimental” is the right word here. Can we try coining “eccentric” as a genre?—Łukasz Konatowicz
#8: TONFA, TRZECIA SZYNA (Big Tonga Energy)
“While giving hints of the broad “experimental hip-hop” category that rappers like MIKE and Billy Woods operate in, TONFA make rap that’s unburdened by genre expectations, sounding remarkably imaginative, fresh and seeking.”—Patryk Mrozek; read more in BWT #4
#7: Coals, Sanatorium (PIAS Recordings Poland)
“There are some incredible highs on the duos previous albums and EP-s, but it's hard not to think that Sanatorium is the record they've been working towards all that time: both their richest and tightest, flexing songwriting and production skills at every turn, and both shamelessly poppy and shamelessly weird.”—Łukasz Konatowicz; read more in BWT #4
#6: Staś Czekalski, Przygody (Mondoj)
“[Przygody’s first single] “Koniec Lata” echoes the lo-fi lounge of Stereolab’s most meandering tracks: anchored around a looped, dubby bass riff, the song is supported and propelled by a chorus of percussion instruments that all sound teeny on their own, but together make the song burst with color.”—Patryk Mrozek; read more in BWT #3
#5: Zaumne, Only Good Dreams for Me (Warm Winters)
Zaumne follows one of our favorite ambient-adjacent records of 2023, Parfum, with an album that continues its predecessor’s finely-spun, whimsical approach to sound design, while bringing in some unexpected pop sensibilities and hopeful moods. On Only Good Dreams for Me, Mateusz Olszewski’s first release for Slovak label Warm Winters, once again we are dropped in the middle of half-dreamt soundscapes, intricately constructed out of haunting synth textures, ASMR-triggering voice samples, and found sounds that reflect a sort of hyper-awareness to the artist’s environment. What’s new is how busy and welcoming this ambience feels compared to Zaumne’s previous albums, both to the listener and to the other voices that inhabit it. Album highlight “Love2” features a poem written and recited by artist Natalia Panzer, fully awake and emotionally resonant, while dubby “Iskra” and closing “The Open Window” are driven by propulsive rhythms and bright melodies, recalling the hauntology of Boards of Canada. If Zaumne’s music can sometimes sound like night terrors, Only Good Dreams for Me sends the message that waking up is possible.—Patryk Mrozek
#4: Jantar, Turnus (Thin Man Records)
“There are patient buildups, gentle drifts and blooming arrangements that give plenty of room to Grzegorz Tarwid's jazzy piano parts and almost proggy electric guitar outbursts of Krzysztof Kaliski. […] all these disparate parts hang together extremely well, connected by a dreamy aura, a polished-but-organic sound, and the magical realism of the lyrics. It's a rich, lush, saturated record that will keep you discovering new favorite bits for weeks.”—Łukasz Konatowicz; read more in BWT #5
#3: Raphael Rogiński, Žaltys (Unsound)
It might be surprising to you, but despite their geographical proximity, the Lithuanian language (a Baltic language) sounds and looks very different from the Polish language (a Slavic language). I don't want to get into any problematic territory here, but the Lithuanian plant names used as titles (“Borbašo Gvazdikas,” “Tamsialapis Skiautalūpis,” “Raudonoji Gegūnė”) on Žaltys, the 2024 album by the venerated Polish guitar player Raphael Rogiński, seem alluringly mysterious. The record oozes a kind of primordial magic, just as the cover suggests. Rogiński's layered but clean playing surprisingly recalls The Durutti Column's Vini Reilly at times, but it also seems to have absorbed entire centuries of musical traditions. The effect is a magical reality—electrified folklore that is both unmoored (from any genre) and grounded.—Łukasz Konatowicz
#2: 2K88: SHAME (Unsound)
Celebrated producer Przemysław Jankowiak has made a career-defining statement with SHAME: a dark, richly textured album that stretches the boundaries of instrumental hip-hop, building on the unique history of Poland’s take on the genre and a reverence for UK soundsystem culture. Sampling from 1990s Polish hip-hop—itself constructed from snippets of an earlier domestic canon—SHAME echoes the music of Skalpel, who famously built their sound on the Polish Jazz record series. By drawing from Poland’s own archives, Jankowiak is placing the country’s hip-hop heritage into a broader conversation with its British counterparts, reflecting not only musical connections but also cultural ones—such as the waves of Polish migration to the UK in the 2000s. SHAME fuses together shards of drum & bass, deep, rumbling basslines, ambient textures, and deconstructed vocal samples, creating a dusky soundscape reminiscent of Burial’s nocturnal atmospherics. The tracks are undercut by a paranoid drive and bound together by drab, smoke-filled tones, like glimpses of light refracted through a basement window. 2K88 has crafted an album that’s both archival and futuristic, deeply rooted and resolutely forward-looking.—Patryk Mrozek
#1: Antonina Nowacka, Sylphine Soporifera (Mondoj)
“Sound artist Antonina Nowacka follows her breakthrough collaboration with Sofie Birch, Languoria, with a grand and dazzling, multihued album that sees her imagination run wild while still carrying music that just about anyone would want to hang their ear on. […] Like an annual festival in the times of antiquity, Nowacka’s record succeeds in a rare feat: the ability to match the richness of its concept with the immediacy of its delivery.”—Patryk Mrozek; read more in BWT #6
Honorable Mentions
2K88, Hades, & Kosi: SUBARU (STRATA)
Bałtyk - Hope You Can Hear Me Now (self-released)
Bartosz Kruczyński - Dreams & Whispers (Balmat)
Bassvictim - Basspunk EP (KMIF)
Dawno Temu - Sacralia (Pointless Geometry)
Franek Warzywa & Młody Budda - Komputer EP (self-released)
GERDA - Diabeł (Dyspensa Records)
JAVVA - Picaros EP (Mystic Production)
Kosmonauci - Sorry, nie tu (U JAZZ ME Records)
Lumpeks - Polonez (Umlaut Records)
Lutto Lento - 2567 EP (self-released)
Maciej Maciągowski - Urban Balafon (Brutality Garden)
mosa.tech - WOJNE (self-released)
nath - RODOPSYNA (self-released)
Radical Polish Ansambl - Nierozpoznana wieś (Ośrodek Międzykulturowych Inicjatyw Twórczych Rozdroża)
Daniel Szwed - SUN’S MOTHER (Instant Classic)
Mateusz Tomczak - Niektóre sekrety powinny pozostać marzeniem (enjoy life / Opus Elefantum)
Various Artists - ZSC004 (Zejście)