Nervy debuted on stage in the summer of 2013 at the Wrocław film festival Nowe Horyzonty. Each member of the trio had been active in this city before. In 2008 Igor Boxx called Agim Dzeljilji about a new idea for music. The recordings were still a long time away, however. Three years later the two musicians were joined by drummer Jan Młynarski. From that point on the trio collaborated, but they did so without any great commitments.
Agim Dzeljilji is a producer and keyboard player involved with the Wrocław scene. He is half Kosovar and was born in Jelenia Góra. He is the driving force behind the electronic-pop (and not only) band Öszibarack, with which he released the album 12. He composes film and theatre music. In the 90s he played with Deliver, a band playing artrock electronic music. Later he collaborated with Novika and the bands Hurt and Husky, with which he worked as a producer and musician.
Igor Boxx is the pseudonym of Igor Pudło, a producer known from the great albums of the Skalpel duo which explores the archives of half-a-century-old Polish jazz and changes the samples from those times into dance, and breakbeat electronic music. He also works on his own account, he has released the warmly received album Dream Logic, the reactivated Skalpel has announced that this duo will be releasing a new album in 2014. Boxx and Dzeljilji have collaborated on the production of Od pacyfizmu do ludobójstwa, an album by the band Apteka.
Jan Młynarski was the last to join Nervy. He is a drummer and the son of the great Polish singer-songwriter Wojciech Młynarski. In the past Jan Młynarski collaborated with Öszibarack and Skalpel, he was also the leader of the project Młynarski Plays Młynarski, in the framework of which he presented his father’s output. Together with Joanna Duda the said drummer forms the duo J=J, he is a member of the trio Pole which also consists of Piotr Zabrodzki and Michał Górczyński. Jan Młynarski has also worked with bands of the artists Kayah and Novika. The drummer also plays with Warszawskie Combo Taneczne, which sometimes performs as Janek i Combo.
On their facebook profile the musicians from Nervy introduced themselves to listeners in the following way:
We brought this project into being out of the need to join forces and our sensibilities, which was to result in a new quality. We weren’t limited by any forms, styles or canons. The only element drawing lines was our imagination.
All three of them compose the music, Dzeljilji and Boxx are the producers. The musicians mention that they draw inspiration from Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Karlheinz Stockhausen, but also from Moondog, Yello and New Order. A very important element of Nervy’s lively, strong, kind of dance, but rhythmically complicated music is their horn section. Dzeljilji, who prefers to work with live instruments, arranges the horn section parts. All of this adds up to sounds which have a lot in common with contemporary music. With the right intensity of playing, the looped lines, the recurrence borrowed from works by creators of New York minimalism, put the listener in a trance. The psychedelia emphasizes the constantly changing rhythms. The might of the sound is permeated with the lightness of creation. This is action music.
Listen to the band’s music.
Author: Jacek Świąder, August 2014
Translated by: Marek Kępa