Small specialist Polish imprint Etalabel is dedicated to debuting young, domestic electronic artists and packaging them with an eye on quality. Refreshigly, its owner’s philosophy is that “in the age of digital downloads and mp3’s, the physical package should be like a unique masterpiece.”
Honey by Polish producer Michał Kędziora is a history of modern jazz imagined through a glass, darkly and cracked. Jazz has a special place in the heart of Eastern Europe, surviving the onslaught of both Hitler and Stalin—read any number of short stories, novels and essays by the late Czech-Canadian author Josef Škvorecký. As Noiko, Kędziora, with the aid of turntablist Łukasz Maciejewski on three tracks, has created an amiable lo-fi Frankenstein by seamlessly merging analogue and digital worlds without resorting to a single stock nostalgic gesture.
Opening softly, “Les Particules Élémentaire” is cocktail jazz played for an audience of tired stevedores in a rundown taproom within staggering distance of the docks, flakes of lead-based paint peeling from the walls and falling into the combo’s instruments. In fact, everything on this album is flaking, peeling, derelict, tumbledown. Except for the music itself, which has been painstakingly pieced together over four years and recorded with warmth and clarity.
The title track is as sweet as its name, the saxophone gently interpreting a standard no one remembers. “No Man’s Land” is easy-listening music reimagined by a somnolent industrial band. Mere hints of angular hard bop on “Crumb” contrast nicely with the lightly-brushed cymbals which proceeded it. It is so densely packed, the thirty-three minute running time is the perfect duration, because this is an album you listen to very closely. The air being breathed through the clarinet could fog up your spectacles.
Small specialist Polish imprint Etalabel is dedicated to debuting young, domestic electronic artists and packaging them with an eye on quality. Refreshigly, its owner’s philosophy is that “in the age of digital downloads and mp3’s, the physical package should be like a unique masterpiece.” Which makes the choice of a generic barcode as label logo hilarious.
Honey is available on Etalabel. [Release page | Buy at iTunes]
