PICKS: Kozber's 70s-20s Poland

Published on 2020-06-08 00:00:00 by Loose Lips

For this week’s edition of Picks, we have a close friend of the Loose Lips family, a DJ, producer and member of the next-level psychedelic duo Bonasforsa, here he takes us on a ‘lil weird historical journey, with a modern rebel anti-Communism touch.’ All the spotify-able tracks are gathered here_. Take it away, Kozber!_I was asked to prepare this picks a long time ago, I finally decided to take picks from the huge scene of my country, Poland, though I have lived over here in London for over 14 years! The origin of Polish music can be traced as far back as the 13th century but I’m gonna focus on modern music, starting from early 70.Starting from the older, it’s Czeslaw Niemen one of most important and original Polish singer-songwriters and rock balladeers of the 20th century. Not many people know his experimental, electronic concept album Katharsis. This album was recorded alone, without help from other musicians.We can’t miss jazz… The beginning of jazz in Poland is difficult to determine. As early as the 1930s, clubs in Warsaw, Kraków, Rzeszów or Poznań would play it. Krzysztof Komeda became the leader of a modern jazz movement that did not copy the American way of playing but developed its own “European” style. The amazing band below is filled with top notch jazz musicians, recorded in 1979.I would like to focus on the most incredible polish rock-punk band Kult. I recently realised how important this band is for Poland, and maybe for the freedom of all east block Communist countries surrounded by Poland. Kazik Staszewski wrote and writes about political situation in Poland, for all 40 years he has perfectly monitored any move, mainly bad moves of Polish politicians, converting into brilliant songs with amazing lyrics.From WWII till 1989 almost all sectors of Communist life were controlled and checked. When the U.K. Subs played in Poland with some of our local punk bands, one member said that ”You guys are for real, real punks, doing danger, in England we can sing and write whatever we like but here in Poland it’s a real challenge”.First we listen to this anti-Communist song from 1987.There’s a touch of rock in this serious synthpop band called Kombi. Starting from experimental jazz, from second half of 70s they turned into funk rock, later their style turned towards synthpop. They used a lot of famous in 80 electronic machines such musical equipment as Commodore 64 as a MIDI
sequencer, Prophet 5, Yamaha DX-7 synthesizer, Simmons SDS-V
electronic drum kit and Roland TR-808
drum machine.Formed in 1980, this sublime New Wave band was again important for polish music movement in terms of strong political and social observation and opinion crafted into poetry. Coming from their first ”red album.”No.5 is dedicated to the Polish rare, easy listening funk and disco scene, funk was probably the most famous and acceptable style of the bunch. I selected a disco-cosmic proper dancefloor tune from Chorus and the Company’s rare LP Discoland.Here we are back to Kazik Staszewski. Kazik is not only Kult. He start few successful projects like Kazik, and his Hip Hop concept record was actually the first polish rap album ever… This is taken from the 2nd album Spalaj Sie.Kazik again, we’re gonna listen to his collaboration with musicians from club Mózg from my hometown Bydgoszcz, from a weird Yass album recorded in 1990. Yass is a Polish music style originating in the late 1980s that mixes jazz, improvised music, techno, punk rock, and folk.The forgotten trance-industrial band Wieloryb was established in 1994 in Gdansk, as one of the first Polish industrial bands.No.1 belongs to the previously mentioned veteran musician Kazik with the band Kult. “Twój ból jest lepszy niż mój” (“Your pain is better than mine”) was announced as the number one single in Polish Radio Three’s influential music chart on Friday, only for links to the chart and news about the song to be disabled on the programme’s websitem shortly after the broadcast ended. Polish public radio is embroiled in controversy regarding alleged censorship of a song criticising the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) chairman Jarosław Kaczyński. The affair has prompted protests and resignations from employees, boycotts of the station by musicians, as well as condemnation from all sides of the political spectrum. The song, a collaboration with Wojtek Jabłoński, complains about the tenth anniversary of the Smolensk disaster on 10 April this year, when a number of ruling party politicians were criticised for their apparent failure to observe restrictions on public gatherings while attending the memorial.Kazik strike again, mess-up in Poland to protect Freedom. Staszewski our protagonist.!