Janusz Jurga - IST (2021)

Janusz Jurga not only has released five albums under his own name, he is also a member of the Vysoké Čelo collective and a cofounder of the Opus Elefantum label, one of the best on Polish offstream music scene. His newest album is called IST and provides us with everything we love in his music since 2018 and his debut album Duchy Rogowca.

Jurga's deep electronica/dub/techno music is, as always, filled with "dark, dense and oneiric atmosphere", similar to what one can find in dark ambient and dark folk genres. This mysterious and a little bit unnerving ambiance is seamlessly combined with deep-bass electronica making me think of the Lithuanian Giriu Dvasios, who, just like Jurga does, also draws inspirations from folk music to a high degree. Just like on his best-known release Hypnowald, Jurga decorates the electronic passages with forest-originating field recordings and this is something that couldn't fit this music better. This makes the forest dance in a rather ominous way, dance around you and everyone who's lost within. Another thing is the spoken word vocals that appear in the opening and the finishing tracks, performed by Żebyr, the lyrics make the whole album even deeper and more mysterious. Especially the very last sentence of the release: "I guess it doesn't matter what place we ended up in, we're here".

IST costs 2.5 EUR (10 PLN).

Janusz Jurga - Hypnowald (2019) EN

Check: WALD

Country: Poland

Genre: dark folk dub

Label: Opus Elefantum

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