A Polish CD with new electro acoustic music is something rare to me, but since the art of electroacoustics in Poland has been around many years and decades, it’s probably my gaze that’s been faulty, if not the international distribution of these items. I know that some of the best works that Norwegian guru Arne Nordheim put out was realized and recorded in Poland, already in the 1960s.
When this CD comes to me from Canada, it is a pleasant surprise, nonetheless.

The first piece is a joint effort by Grazyna Paciorek (b.1967) and Marcin Wierzbicki (b.1969); “Great Mystery” for tape. The work emerges like a modern chamber piece, rather than a traditional computer music piece. It sounds like a mixed piece (electronics and traditional instruments), with sudden events echoing as the progression commences. You get the impression of a haphazard compositional method, or maybe a chance operation – as the percussive and keyboard sounds jolt forward, jerking, sometimes in massive clusters. Deep murmurs amplify the impression of an aim to over-power the listener and any compositional obstacle that might occur. About four and a half minute into the work permutated vocal sounds – undistinguishable words – make the piece quite a bit more interesting, and from there on it only gets better, filling the sounding space of my room with a jitter of simultaneous events – and I especially like it when I cannot easily determine how the sounds were made, or what kind of software was used. Parts of this piece really are pretty impressive, as far as electro acoustic music goes. The penetrating shrills that arrive at about 7:30 spice things up even further, and I leave this work quite a bit more satisfied than I had expected in the beginning. The piece transforms beautifully along the way.

Maciej Zoltowski (b.1971) is allotted track 2 on the CD with “Emet” for violin and tape, so this really is a mixed piece. A majestic – if also a bit hesitating – beginning; melancholic, introspective, is charged by a stubborn glissando, repeated more and more violently, as the speed picks up. High pitch events paint an orange tint on the upper section of the canvas, as the painter/musician steps back to watch his achievement in the daylight falling in through the tonal structure. At times the violin part – shadowed electronically – resembles some Xenakis pieces out of his chamber oeuvre. Around 7:00 the music turns extremely rhythmic, in a tasteful way, sweeping you along into a romani ending.

Next piece – “Aniki pamieci” – by Anna Ignatowicz is scored for percussion and tape. It has a dreamy Chinese beginning, with a vibrating occurrence in the left channel and Eastern percussion all over the place, though at first dispersed sparsely and fastidiously. The percussion is mastered by the talented Ryszard Bazarnik. At about 2:32 the voice of Katarzyna Olk strokes gently across the expanse of the electro acoustics, moving the piece in a different direction, but Subotnick-like, frantic keyboardings hijack the music into yet another environment. Maybe Ignatowicz should have cleansed the sound web of some unnecessary objects, and left the voice and the percussion to themselves for most of the duration. They’re so beautiful together.

Fourth track is “Clouds” for tape by Maciej Zielinski (b. 1971). A wintry, windy landscape is envisioned in the beginning, with cold, windswept arctic expanses rolling out its blinding whiteness. The relationship with for example Pierre Henry’s “Le livre des morts Égyptien” at his stage of the music turn my thoughts towards the book that Henry reproduced by some manipulated piano chords, and towards “the Tibetan Book of the Dead”. That’s how intensely otherworldly it sounds, and that is a compliment in my book of judgments! The tape also contains a mass of unruly voices, like the confused thoughts of the newly deceased, trying to get their bearings straight, not fully understanding their predicament. By all this you can tell this is an imaginative piece! A horrendous downpour evolves towards the end of the track, or… is that the sounds of a glacier shuddering, dispersing lightning-fast cracks and crevasses across ten-thousand-year-old ice? And is that a bird of hope, of future breezing by momentarily? And what is that magpie doing in these environments? And those gulls? What is this? Just the dreams of the dead?

“Music of Silence” for flute and medias is the fascinating title of Marcin Wierzbicki’s (b.1969) work. The flute dances through a sweeping choreography, utterly alone, showing off to an imagined audience… It is fully content with its own presence, I can tell. It’s an ego-tripped flute, this one… but what now? Amplified and echoed vents of the flute tap across the membranes of my earphones, and the reverberation of space suddenly loses itself in the electronic manipulations of the composer – and darn, it gets hectic, fun, innovative – and then… silent.

Piotr Grella-Mozejko participates with “Coloratura for Charles/disco(n)notation” for baritone saxophone and electronics. He is probably the most known of the composers on this CD. His piece enters the scene with a jolly, vigorous baritone saxophone in a tonal succession that seems clear enough, but displaying a magnitude of different characteristics, with light electronic manipulations and shadings. The piece does not have a very distinct formal scheme. It feels more that this is a musical event that is always going on, which Piotr Grella-Mozejko has tapped in to at a random stretch. Andriy Talpash handles the load with expertise.

The last part of the CD is occupied by Pawel Lukaszewski (b. 1968) and his “One Week in London” for tape. To begin with the music reminds me of some early Russian synthesizer music by Artemiy Artemiev, i.e. a little too much on the plastic, melodic, “what-the-not-so-initiated-people-think-is-electroacoustics”, and it’s hard to get rid of that feeling in this piece. Artemiev soon evolved in a more complex and much more interesting direction, and let’s hope that this young composer follows suit. However, a little further into the piece an interesting collage technique takes over for a while, like in some electro-acoustic pieces by Jean Schwarz, and that is the one place worthy of some praise in this short work.

On the whole this is an interesting and necessary release, and we hope for more music from the EAM-coummunity of Poland!