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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Janusz Jurga - Hypnowald (2019) EN

Recently on the blog came back Giriu Dvasios with his mixture of dub and folk music and now it's time for his Polish (and way darker) counterpart, new album by Janusz Jurga called Hypnowald.

Actually the artist has his own name for the music he makes - ambient forest techno. And it's very much accurate. Sampled bird hooting, fire cracking and generally unsettling but natural noises of the night forest come forth during the whole album. Four pieces that create a festival of atmospheric and aesthetically pleasing electronic music lined with some limbs-moving basses. Perhaps there's not much of the traditional folk music here (instrumentally and vocally speaking) but it's enough to listen to the third track on the album and get into the folk interpretation of the world that it involves. And finally the more traditional folk is also present in the last song with its ethno-singing. Good stuff.

Hypnowald costs 3 EUR.

Check: 4 HYPNOWALD 4

Country: Poland

Genre: folk dub

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Janusz Jurga - Hypnowald (2019) PL

Całkiem niedawno na blog wrócił Giriu Dvasios ze swoim połączeniem elektronicznego dubu i folku, teraz czas na jego polski (i dużo, dużo mroczniejszy) odpowiednik - nowy album Janusza Jurgi Hypnowald.

Zresztą sam artysta ma na swoją muzykę własne określenie: ambient forest techno. No i jest to całkiem trafione. Zasamplowane pohukiwanie ptaków, trzaskanie ognia i ogólnie niepokojące a naturalne dźwięki nocnego lasu pojawiają się na płycie przez cały czas jej trwania. Cztery kawałki to festiwal klimatycznej i estetycznej elektroniki podbijanej wyraźnym, ruszającym do tańca basem. Być może z tradycyjnego folku nie ma tu za dużo (instrumentalnie, wokalnie, etc), ale wystarczy posłuchać trzeciego kawałka na płycie i spokojnie zanurzyć się w folkowej interpretacji świata. Tylko tym razem zagranej na elektronicznych dźwiękach. W końcu i tradycyjny folk dochodzi do głosu dzięki tradycyjnie brzmiącym etno zaśpiewom w części czwartej. Dobry stuff.

Hypnowald kosztuje 10 złotych (3 EUR).

Sprawdź: 4 HYPNOWALD 4

Kraj: Polska

Szufladka: folk dub

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