Brzmi w Trzcinie #9: Patrick Shiroishi & Piotr Kurek, Paszka, Miłosz Kędra, and more
Six remarkable albums of the spring and early summer
Here are our favorite new albums by Polish artists released between March and June (and one gem that dates all the way back to January).
Patrick Shiroishi & Piotr Kurek, Greyhound Days (Mondoj)
Though separated by continents, the musicians behind Greyhound Days—based in Los Angeles and Warsaw respectively—share a similar professional rhythm. Both are prolific composers and soloists, frequent collaborators with others, and no strangers to the gallery performance world. Now, they’ve come together to record seven variations on a theme: a democratic exchange between Kurek’s digital piano and Shiroishi’s tenor saxophone. Variations that maintain a delicate balance between each artist’s contributions, a measured, deliberate pace, and a prevailing mood of melancholia, never tipping into despair. The intensity of the tracklist fluctuates depending on how boldly the two push one another: whether it’s Kurek crafting melodic, looping piano lines (“Shadows”), or Shiroishi leaning into the emotional depth of his solos (“Now I’m Broken Into”). The album reaches its most powerful moments when that challenge is accepted, and together they build towards sweeping monumentalism and euphoria (“Days”) or drift into a trance-like consonance (“Aerials”). This is collaboration at its best: where the unspoken becomes palpable.—Patryk Mrozek
Paszka, Estoy Chillando (LOM)
Kraków producer Paszka is frequently name-dropped in the same breath as Julek Ploski, eh hahah, and Jakub Lemiszewski, and likewise applauded for the unorthodox sound design of both his solo productions and beats for others. On Estoy Chillando, the inscrutable rhythmic patterns and textural nuance elevate that sound design to a level rarely, if ever, reached in his—or nearly anyone else’s—discography. Rooted in glitch, IDM, and avant-garde composition, and occasionally brushing against the understated warmth of early-2000s indietronica, these effervescent tracks feel almost four-dimensional: like watching delicate objects form and dissolve before your eyes, in slow motion and under a magnifying glass—or slipping right through your fingers. With few tracks exceeding a minute and a half, and featuring guest appearances from radically different artists (including Kacha Kowalska, Ursula Sereghy, and Staś Czekalski), the album darts in multiple directions and teases countless microcosms while never fully entering orbit, but that doesn’t necessarily play against its favor. Like a box of keepsakes from a life well-lived, Estoy Chillando draws its pleasures from the richness of its contents and the spirit of adventure it embodies.—Patryk Mrozek
Miłosz Kędra, their internal diapasons (Pointless Geometry)
If their internal diapasons doesn’t sound like anything you’ve heard before, that’s because it literally can’t. The album was recorded with a self-made pipe organ that Kędra—a Master’s degree candidate at the Academy of Music in Poznań—constructed from decommissioned pipes salvaged from churches across Poland. Restored, their voices were then electro-acoustically treated to produce a strikingly rich spectrum of timbres, tones, and articulations: every breath counts. The result is nine compositions that, while minimalist in their sparse use of melody, feel opulent and meandering thanks to the sheer density and variety of sounds they contain. Though sourced from a single instrument, these tones could easily be mistaken for both field recordings of the natural world and purely synthesized electronics. their internal diapasons fascinates because it explores what contemporary sound design might sound like without the use of computers or oscillators.—Patryk Mrozek
Julek ploski, Give Up Channel (mappa)
Having made the move from Orange Milk to mappa, Give Up Channel is Julek Ploski’s first LP since Hotel *****, which made our list of best releases of 2023. The typically prolific producer may have been busy with his bff label, whose output revolves around a similar kind of video game-ready, world-building EDM-slash-contemporary classical hybrids as Ploski’s work. And yet Give Up Channel reminds me of how unique his art feels within that aesthetic. For one thing, Ploski doesn’t seem to care much for modern academic music, and his world-building feels more like an imaginative display of construction materials than a single, cohesive vision. As on earlier releases, those materials include SFX-driven production with massive drops, unexpected acoustic flourishes, medieval undertones, and a tendency for things to ultimately resolve into trance. What’s new here are features—like Martyna Basta and Patrick Shiroishi—that emphasize the non-synthetic, as well as a sense of subtlety, even fragility, that makes these collages more tastefully ornate than purposely garish, more economical than bursting at their seams. Ploski has called Give Up Channel a personal, hopeful record, and it’s hard not to imagine that he himself is a gentler, more affable presence than his past music might have suggested.—Patryk Mrozek
Olga Anna Markowska, ISKRA (Miasmah)
The debut full-length from interdisciplinary artist, composer, and multi-instrumentalist Olga Anna Markowska is all movement. Her primary instrument, the cello, arrives in oceanic waves, whispered conversations, and bellowing soliloquies—soothing and unsettling by turns, but always melodically rich. A backdrop of synthesized textures sets the scene, looped piano passages propel her forward, and tirelessly kinetic zithers seem to urge her on. The album is described as bridging “the difficult point between classical and ambient music,” which likely captures its point of departure. Its destination, however, is classical only in its most defiant and free-thinking form, and ambient only in the sense of scoring the act of wandering—not any one fixed environment. —Patryk Mrozek
J.Inhale, Astrid (enjoy life)
In the artist’s own words, Astrid recounts a journey to a familiar place that somehow feels different each time you dare to set off—like walking through the woods and losing your way, even though you’ve done it a hundred times before. It’s a journey steeped in sentiment and nostalgia, yet shadowed by fear and uncertainty. For the listener, it’s those darker emotions that surface most vividly. The soundscape may be a sort of comfort zone for j.inhale, but to new ears it feels eerily menacing. Beyond the nightmare-fuel cover art, the chills come from screeching, detuned, electro-acoustically warped violin, guitar strings plucked like spiders slipping through cracks, distant Caretaker-like piano hauntology, and reverb-drenched vibraphone that recalls Boards of Canada. Layered throughout is a haunting spaciousness—both in the mix and in the anxious anticipation of what’s next. Don’t get me wrong: Astrid is a rich and evocative album and a rewarding trip to undertake—as long as you’re comfortable settling into its headspace.—Patryk Mrozek