Grzegorz Bojanek
Analogue

2014

 

 

 

 

Zing! There goes the screen, it is broken, the laptop’s anything but an expensive plastic or aluminum hodgepodge. While this is a no-go situation for many an electronic musician of today, Polish multi-instrumentalist and ETALABEL runner Grzegorz Bojanek is capable of taking a hint and hence comes up with an electro-acoustic Glitch/Drone album that is more keen on the acoustic than the electro side of things, or to put it simple: no laptop/computer is used. Enter Analogue and its seven tracks, released on Gavin Catling’s Perth, Australia-based Twice Removed label. Available to purchase on CD or digital-only at Bandcamp, Analogue delineates Grzegorz Bojanek’s talent for great guitar-based melodies and his proclivity for comparatively mild sine tones, blips of decay and other joyful embellishments that are used to comfort in lieu of harassment. The album sports the greatest guitar-based micro melodies since the artist’s blazingly yellow album Constraints (2013), and what its title so portentously promised back then is refined further within the intrinsic boundaries of Analogue. The focus is tightly set, this is an eclectic – but not convoluted – work of actions (sounds) and counteractions (silence) whose gestalt gyres between full throttle drones and soothing fragility. Provided that your reading and productivity device isn’t broken, I invite you to come along and read a few detailed thoughts about Grzegorz Bojanek’s Analogue.

 

It is almost unbelievable that no laptop or computer hodgepodge is involved during the process of creating this record; possible it is indeed, but once the magnanimously long photometry of Peaceful Noise unfolds within its time-related boundaries of eleven minutes, chances are that the void of fibrillar crackles, ground loop veils and two-tone desperado riffs throws the listener into a fittingly analogue cesspool. Slurping exhalations, decorticated thiazides, the prolonged sustain of darkly rumbling piano keys: as an oxymoron, Peaceful Noise absorbs the internecine darkness and allows the unfoldment of sound-based illuminants, aggrandized specks and the mephitic mélange of Power Shoegaze outbursts. During the track’s apex, Grzegorz Bojanek succumbs to melodic interdependencies as the plinking lute withstands the blotchy Glitch vesicles. In its later stage, the opener continues to enforce the ideograph of a swamp, given that the liquid molecules and increasingly cavernous dripstone sparks make up the majority of the recondite superfluid. In a wondrous twist, the Polish artist harvests these textures in the follow-up Collection and purifies them in a whitewashed pericarp. The argentine splashing feels much more benign, the guitar chords emit aureate fireflies, spawning warmth and amicability in a soundscape that is half blurred, half pristine. Wind chimes and gongs are the soothing ornaments to a strikingly euphonious granuloma.

 

Grzegorz Bojanek has showcased his love for remote murkiness in the opener and the contrapuntal foil of vivacity in the second track. The third offering Loop The Loops seems to be torn between these two moods, between horticultural Glitch aureoles on the one hand and fluorescent chromaticity on the other. The result is a lavabo limbo supercharged with screeching asbestus chords that almost evoke the Peruvian loftiness of syrinx-fueled memories. Heavily bubbling low frequency blebs and circular saw cannelures remind of a no man’s land. It is only in the second half that the track brightens up and lifts off its cloistered courtyard of the mind via sun-dappled acoustic guitars, glockenspiel scintillae and snake-evoking hisses. Not entirely harmonious, still keen on clandestine structures, Loop The Loops nonetheless leaves the compunction behind qua its reticulation of gnarly rhizomes and languorous convulsions, with the consecutive Cut The Tape being more than a diaphanous hint about its raison d’être. A Drone track in the true sense of the word complete with helicoidal legato emanations and whistling sine sinews, the tumular resin within the AM radio washes and juxtaposed phantom frequencies is densely layered. Only in the final stage does the droning piece turn into a murky pith of emptiness, gleefully multiplexing both metalization and aural lanthanides before it winds down for good.

 

The subsequent Objects is certainly a piercing yet beguiling vestibule to bagpipe-like harpsichord-esque accordion cataracts running on all cylinders into the rubicund sunset. The texture itself is undoubtedly noteworthy, but it is not entirely clear whether Grzegorz Bojanek uses the instrument’s rufescent complexion as a solacing prism or a genuinely frightening Tartarean braiding. Both interpretations are equally valid – or whimsical, if you will – once the listening subjects feasts on the rising motif of the acoustic guitar which invokes soothing rather than seething dewdrops. Granted, these gorgeous guitar melodies are but a somnolent fugacity, sternly outshone by the reddish flare of the accordion-driven devilish shanty. The result is a dichotomous paroxysm: does it want to be uplifting? Are the dark but sylvan undertones mere figments? The contiguous Paper Music meanwhile is more clear in its physiognomy. Sporting alluvial strata of static noise, brazen metal sources and erbaceous bleeps, this piece is a welcome cloudlet of doldrums and standstill. Ligneous bops, Psychedelica prongs created with the antediluvian guitar and small flumes of blurred nebulae round off a lush parallax diorama. The finale comes in the shape of the aptly titled Last Experience, a short appendix that resembles the second track Collection in that the artist seduces the listener with heterodyned syringa bursts aquiver with liveliness. Shades of Mediterranean flashes, vanilla scents and aeriform effulgence, the pointillistic stop-and-go motion augments the crepuscular spectrum with cavalcades of spiraling colors.

 

Shuttling between Drone/Glitch undulations and wondrously earthbound investigations of bona fide frequencies complete with processed afterglows, the etherealism of Analogue manifests itself through susurration and the occasional power plucking that scythes through the circumambience. The basic premise – and promise – of Grzegorz Bojanek is the closed or broken lid of his laptop, and while I do not know the recording process in greater detail, it appears that the presence of electronic gadgetry is reduced to a bare minimum. The good thing about Analogue is its tendency of annihilating this very concept, not by injecting software-based patches and stems, but rather via a gorgeous vortex of seemingly post-processed coruscation. The multitudinous blazes, dots and driblets, however, are created by different means here. This leads to another aesthetic heirloom and great achievement: one may easily forget Grzegorz Bojanek’s self-exposed limit and reductionist treatment, for it does not ring through the thickly wadded cascades, let alone the calcined appendixes of darkness. Indeed, the minimalism never feels forced, gimmicky or tacky, but leads to a listening experience that is as spheroidal as it is inorganic despite the focus on the analogue way of life. Both Drone and Glitch fans can look forward to an enlightening and delightful listening experience, with the acoustic guitars simmering and their electric brethren shimmering opalescently. The strong melodies and movements are undoubtedly the pillar to hold onto, and once the corrosive power of the subversive alkaline particles comes into play, said pillar turns into a pillow, as is so often the case regarding Grzegorz Bojanek’s constructions.

 

Further listening and reading: 

 

Ambient Review 363: Grzegorz Bojanek – Analogue (2014). Originally published on Jul. 30, 2014 at AmbientExotica.com.