25 August 2010

Szymon Kaliski - out of forgetting (2010, Audiomoves)


Is it a Polish sensitivity like there is an Australian one or a Japanese one. The temptation to draw links with Tomasz Bednarczyk or So Quiet, or even here to a movie like "The Double Life of Veronique", is strong and maybe a too easy shortcut for a reviewer but I can't resist with the austerity, the use of electronic piano and a sense of electronic abstraction and a feeling of winter which are somewhat shared.

Szymon Kaliski is young musician living in small town near Poznań, Poland who releases a first album impressively mature and minimal. The black and white picture on the sleeve says it all, a non smoked cigarette laying on an unused ashtray, a cup of tea still full, and a book just opened at its beginning.

"Out of forgetting" is so extreme, so radical that it's really difficult to imagine what he will be able to compose and release next, it's like a tabula rasa on himself, like a mirror he will have to go through next, introducing new elements, new writing direction, alleviating an almost religious weight. When you listen to this music, you feel how vast, cold, empty and infinite the sky is above your head. There is warmth at times but often of a mineral quality.

Described as this you might imagine "Out of forgetting" as a huge piece of glass which inspires respect and admiration but doesn't really move. But there are a few cracks on this debut album where you can find refuge. 

"Or Delicate" is such a treasure, a wonderful combination of abstraction and intimacy, where piano notes fall like drops of water on a landscape of deep foggy icy drones. It's the beauty of tears, of a melancholy eager for hope and for a coming dawn. "A point to" uses a similar process but inspires a comforting feeling of nonchalance like when you're lost in a flux on thoughts, dreaming while looking at landscapes while on a bus or on a train between two destinations.

"To Specific Place" reminds me of The Stars of the Lid or even Pan•American but with the spontaneity and freshness of youth, with a certain welcome euphoria. "Of Decay" is like walking in the alley of a cathedral when suddenly sunlight is falling on you through a multi colored stained glass window. 

The three other tracks are much more monochromatic and less captivating.  "Out of forgetting" is a great debut album, but for Szymon, the real challenge has just started.


No comments:

Post a Comment