Autumn: The Essential Album Guide

jesienne chmury suwalszczyzna fot Andrzej Sidor forum-0429280279-s.jpg, full-width, Autumn clouds, Suwałki region, photo: Andrzej Sidor / Forum, Autumn: The Essential Album Guide

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From sung poetry to black metal: Filip Lech and Patryk Zakrzewski recommend albums for rainy days in autumn.

Sława Przybylska – ‘Melodies at Dusk’, 1959

‘Old memories of youth return / I’m once again enveloped by spring’, sings Sława Przybylska in the song Fascynacja (Fascination; music: Fermo Dante Marchetti, lyrics: Ola Obarska). However, this is merely a recollection of the season when the world awakens to life. In the next song, the withered leaves are already falling. ‘There is only a shadow / a chilled shadow’, we hear in the song Znów opadł liść (A Leaf Has Fallen Again; music: Ryszard Sielicki, lyrics: Roman Sadowski). This short album by a Polish singer is completely dominated by a melancholic tone alluding to a forgotten and passing world:

Then you suddenly left, the door is open,

A leaf blown by the wind fell at my feet.

And then I understood – it’s over

It’s time to cross the threshold of farewells.

[‘Do You Remember, It Was Autumn’, performed by Sława Przybylska; music: Lucjan Kaszycki, lyrics: Andrzej Czekalski, Ryszard Pluciński]

At the end of the 1950s, Frank Sinatra was still the most recognisable voice on the American stage, yet traditional pop music was gradually fading into obscurity. Rock and roll reigned supreme, and soul music was gaining increasing popularity. Behind the Iron Curtain, time passed a bit more slowly, and Sława Przybylska reached back for Marchetti’s standards, composed in the first decade of the 20th century. As the lyrical I says in the song, Już wszystko było (It’s All Happened Already), which, surprisingly, is not a manifesto predicting postmodernism:

Who likes a sad song?

Who wants to listen to it today?

To find yourself in its sounds,

Your passing days.

[‘It’s All Happened Already’, performed by Sława Przybylska; music: Władysław Szpilman, lyrics: Jan Gałkowski]

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Sława Przybylska - Pamiętasz była jesień [Official Audio]

The most characteristic song on the album, Pamiętasz była jesień (It Was Autumn, You Recall) became one of the greatest hits of post-war Polish cinema – all thanks to Wojciech Jerzy Has, who was truly obsessed with it. He used it in Pożegnania (Farewells, 1958) and Rozstanie (Goodbye to the Past, 1960). We can also hear it in Jan Łomnicki’s TV series Dom (The House), Andrzej Wajda’s Tatarak (Sweet Rush, 2009) and Jerzy Stuhr’s Obywatel (Citizen, 2014).

[Filip Lech]

Mira Kubasińska & Breakout – ‘Fire’, 1973

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Mira Kubasińska & Breakout - Liście zabrał wiatr [Official Audio]

Everyone who has seen Mariusz Wilczyński’s Zabij to i wyjedź z tego miasta (Kill It and Leave This Town) knows that Breakout’s blues rock perfectly complements the melancholic and gloomy atmosphere of the film. Its soundtrack is dominated by songs performed by Tadeusz Nalepa, while on the album Ogień (Fire) Bogdan Loebel’s lyrics are accompanied by the powerful voice of Mira Kubasińska. The highlight of the album is undoubtedly the twelve-minute track Wielki ogień (Great Fire), which incorporates elements of both Edmund Fetting’s song Nim wstanie dzień (Before the Day Dawns; music: Krzysztof Komeda, lyrics: Agnieszka Osiecka), written for the film Prawo i pięść (The Law and the Fist), and proto–black metal. The next track on the album is also poignantly autumnal – a depressing folk-rock ballad titled Liście zabrał wiatr (The Wind Took the Leaves Away).

Our love feels very cold today,

How can we warm its hands,

The last leaf fell from the tree long ago,

And tomorrow the first snow will fall.

[...]
Our love feels very cold,

Where to hide it from the frost today,

So many houses, so many roads.

And it has nowhere to go.

[Patryk Zakrzewski]

Świetliki – ‘C.oncentration G.arden’, 1995

‘November, almost the end of the world’, recites Marcin Świetlicki in the penultimate song from Świetliki’s debut album. The opening track, Parasolki (Umbrellas), sets the mood perfectly, sounding as if the band Birthday Party had spent a month in Kraków during the transition period, where smog and Polish fruit compote stifled all the wild passion of the musicians, leaving only sadness and melancholy. Vanitas vanitatum, the poet tells us: ‘and all this is as permanent as a phone number written on a matchbook’.

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Świetliki - Parasolki

A hazy and smoky atmosphere permeates the entire album – even when the musicians try to play ska, it sounds nervous and dysfunctional, utterly lacking Jamaican warmth. In the lyrics of the abovementioned song, ...Ska, Świetlicki, as befits a great Kraków poet, grapples with Polishness. However, the backdrop to all these stories is mainly the city, cloudy and gloomy. Kraków in early winter, in a liminal phase before ‘Snow will fall and cover everything / For now, however, you can still see the city / A black bone occasionally illuminated by the lights / Of tiny cars’ – a city you want to leave and ‘use leaves to wipe all the dust and grease off your clothes’, but you end up in the nearest bar or café anyway.

Please forgive this stereotypical view. I was a child in the 1990s, so naturally I did not go to bars, and I only spent one day in Kraków during a school trip. Therefore, I do not know what emotions accompanied the closing of the Młoda Gwardia cinema, what it was like to hang out at Vis-à-vis in a don’t-join-me-at-the-table mood or what the coffee tasted like at Rio. Back then, my image of the city of Wisława Szymborska and Karol Kot was shaped mainly by albums by Świetliki and Maciej Maleńczuk’s bands. And a picture emerged from them of two ways of coping with Kraków spleen and of dispelling the weather, that’s right, the weather of bars – namely, drinking in doorways (Maleńczuk) or drinking in bars (Świetliki). Apartments are occasionally frequented for making love in, provided the weather doesn’t adversely affect interpersonal relations:

A banal story:

A woman, a man.

Rain!

And everything inside me screams:

Taxi, taxi, taxi!

Right now!

Rain!

Rain!

To your place or mine.

Somewhere dry.

[Patryk Zakrzewski]

Alex Szilasi – ‘Chopin: Nocturnes’, 2012

Fryderyk Chopin composed 21 nocturnes, a form that accompanied him throughout his life. He wrote the first three, from opus 9, when he was 22, and the last one, Nocturne in C Minor (WN 62), was composed a year or two before his death. Chopin’s nocturnes are quite diverse works, but their common feature is certainly their melodiousness and mood swings, most often in the turbulent middle section, contrasting with the slowness of the rest of the piece. ‘The Nocturne in B Minor emerges from silence and returns to silence’, wrote Mieczysław Tomaszewski about composition number 1 from opus 9. When commentators on the nocturnal pieces composed by this piano Romantic abandon musicological categories, they must resort to often highly exalted poetic language. This was the case, for example, with another great composer, Hector Berlioz, in a text written after Chopin’s death: ‘The splendour of exquisite melodies, their proud and smiling flow, their contempt for any vulgar surroundings, their passion, restrained or focused, their divine charm, their delicious sound’ (Mort de Chopin by H. Berlioz, Journal des débats, Paris 27.10.1849).

The Polish composer was not fond of public performances, except perhaps in his own sitting room. He was unable to transfer his intimate musical stories to larger venues, as he felt uncomfortable performing recitals for anonymous audiences. Nocturnes are perhaps the most intimate of Chopin’s musical works, and modern concert pianists still find it challenging to perform them in public. I believe that their essence is well captured by the words of the author himself, who wrote in a letter to Tytus Wojciechowski in 1830: ‘You live, you feel, you are lived, you are felt by others, so you are unhappily-happy. I understand you, I penetrate your soul and… let us embrace, for there is nothing more to say’.

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Nocturnes, Op. 15: No. 3 in G minor

Choosing the nocturne as an example of autumn music is indeed a simplification and the soft option. In the late autumn landscape, it is hard not to make such a comparison when the subdued presence of sunbeams makes each day feel poignantly nocturnal. All of Chopin’s music is imbued with regret. If this article had been written in early autumn, which in recent years have all not only been golden but also very hot, I would probably have written about Chopin’s mazurkas. After all, Michał Bristiger wrote:

Chopin is exuberant by nature, not ascetic at all. He therefore delights in ornamentation, lengthens passages, complicates them […] and at the same time employs a sophisticated psychological strategy, forcing us to savour them.

[‘Radio Festival: Around Chopin’ by M. Bristiger, 1999, ‘Transcriptions’, Gdańsk 2010]

The album by Hungarian pianist Alex Szilasi was released in the ‘Black Series’ by the Fryderyk Chopin Institute, featuring all the composer’s works performed on historical instruments. This time, we hear a Pleyel piano from 1847, which sounds less resonant than modern instruments but is much more nuanced, especially in the high registers, setting it apart from contemporary pianos. Szilasi’s selection of nocturnes includes the Nocturne in G Minor, op. 15, no. 3, the middle section of which, according to Chopin’s instructions, should be played religioso – a term the composer used only once in his entire oeuvre.

[Filip Lech]

Molesta – ‘Phenomenon’, 1999

For me, this is a genuinely autumnal album, even though there are no direct references to any of the four seasons or the weather phenomena associated with them. Nevertheless, you cannot fight associations, and there is nothing I can do about the fact that, with the first bars of this album, my body’s memory triggers the recollection of penetrating dampness spreading through my body from soaked sports shoes or the heat emitted by the radiator in the stairwell on days when it was too cold to sit for hours in the yard. And I suspect that I am not alone in these associations: ‘If, like us, you grew up in a block of flats, you understand this message’, emphasise Vienio and Włodi in their song Miejskie bagno (Urban Swamp).

And everyone hears what the message is: This is the dark side of Warsaw’s housing estates at the dawn of the new millennium, a time of rising crime, high unemployment and deepening inequalities.

The sombre mood of the rhymes and samples pierces you like a November chill. Individual tracks from Molesta’s debut album Skandal (Scandal, 1998), such as Klima (Air-Condish) and Armagedon (Armageddon), foreshadowed the direction taken on Ewenement (Phenomenon) but were interspersed with lighter tracks about the charms of living in a housing estate. On the Ewenement album, even the sole seemingly upbeat song, the funky Za daleki odlot (Tripping Too Far), based on a sample from SBB’s Rainbow Man, refers to the unpleasant effects caused by a THC overdose. The entire album is a disillusioned diagnosis of reality, yet it delivers a positive message consistent with rap ethos: pursue your path and ignore setbacks.

[Patryk Zakrzewski]

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Molesta Ewenement - Miejskie bagno

Pejzaż – ‘Nights & Days’, 2002

‘An autumn leaf is falling’, repeats a low voice many times in the song Jesienna sonata (Autumn Sonata). It’s a fragment of the tango Wróć (Come Back) sung by Reneta Bogdańska, also known as Irena Anders. Listening to the recording from the album Noce i dnie (Nights and Days), it’s hard to tell that these words are sung by a woman and that the song is in the rhythm of a tango. Everything is slowed down and looped, unreal. The album by Warsaw-based electronic music producer Bartosz Kruczyński, a man of many artistic pseudonyms (Pejzaż, The Phantom, Earth Trax), is built on samples from pre-war Polish shellac records. A recurring element in all the compositions is the distinct scratching of an old record, with some tracks being more rhythmic and others dissolving into dreamy ambient soundscapes.

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Spojrzenie

The recordings of Leyland Kirby, who creates under the pseudonym The Caretaker, create the first musical association with Noce i dnie. This British artist, who has lived in Kraków for many years, draws inspiration for his work with shellac records from research on people with Alzheimer’s disease. Looped hits from the past become timelessness, a disturbing world without beginning or end, containing familiar elements but devoid of meaning. Kruczyński was certainly inspired by his work, but he definitely does not copy it. The disease that Pejzaż explores is nostalgia – a concept that originated in medicine before entering the cultural sphere. Nostos means ‘return home’ and algia means ‘longing’; the term was coined in 1688 by Swiss physician Johannes Hofer. He suggested treating this harmless condition with opium, leeches or a trip to the Alps.

In contemporary Polish music, references to the pre-war period are very literal. Artists seek to imitate the sound and vocal styles of older bands. Even if, like Jan Młynarski, they comment on the inequalities that existed in the Second Polish Republic and emphasise the negative phenomena of the past, their work still carries a flavour of historical reconstruction. In this context, Pejzaż’s album is quite unique in its nostalgia because it is entirely metaphorical.

[Filip Lech]

Miasto Nie Spało – ‘Mourning Songs I–VII’, 2000

To state that autumn is a season for contemplation and reflection is like saying that the sun rises and sets each day (here I apologise in advance for this comparison to any readers who might currently be experiencing polar night). There are many good Polish albums dealing with ultimate issues; let us mention, for example, Requiem ludowe (Folk Requiem), a collaboration between the band Kwadrofonik and Adam Strug, or the albums by Nagrobki [meaning ‘headstones’ in Polish, trans.] (which explore funeral themes in a somewhat more grotesque manner). In this list, however, we have opted for a less obvious choice: an album that has been somewhat forgotten but that is still relevant and captivating.

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Miasto Nie Spało - Pieśń I

At the end of the first season of Twin Peaks, agent Cooper correctly concluded that sleep deprivation is a one-way ticket to temporary psychosis. In this case, however, insomnia brings catharsis. Miasto Nie Spało was a trio active in the Tri-City area at the turn of the century. It consisted of Piotr Rhys (double bass), Krzysztof Pawłowski (cello) and Marek Turło (accordion). Each piece from the album Pieśni żałobne I–VII (Mourning Songs I–VII) tells the story of one of the seven stages of mourning. Piotr Rhys’s melancholic and repetitive compositions, reminiscent of Arvo Pärt’s oeuvre and the grandeur of early sacred music, ultimately offer a glimmer of hope. Rhys provided a broader context for the creators’ intentions in an interview for Antena Krzyku [record label] in May 2000:

‘Mourning Songs’ is the story of an attempt to exorcise faith and find answers to the doubts I have regarding […] the myth of eternal life instilled in us since childhood. The protagonist of the album is a person in mourning, and the individual songs symbolise the successive stages of the journey he must undertake before returning to the world.

In the same interview, he explained:

From a musical perspective, the main aim of such a song structure was to create a hypnotic whole so that each listener could abandon their senses through the repeating motifs and then delve into themselves and discover what these mourning songs mean to them. I have always been fascinated by Buddhist music, not because of Buddhism itself, but because of the repetitions in this music, which last long enough for the listener to grasp everything they contain.

[Patryk Zakrzewski]

Ewa Braun – 'Stereo', 2002

Another album from the turn of the century – did autumn last all year round back then? Probably, but this is likely a matter of birth dates and the sentiments that come with them. The band from Słupsk has just become a record holder in our album guides; we’ve already written about their other albums in articles dedicated to various shades of Polish punk rock and noise. Each of these labels may be used to describe their music, but Ewa Braun’s sound has evolved from album to album and resisted easy categorisation. As the band’s guitarist, Marcin Dymiter, told Gazeta Wyborcza, ‘I would love to see Stereo in a music shop on a shelf with no name on it’. So perhaps an autumn album guide is the best place for this record.

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EWA BRAUN - Ptaki czują jesień

Ewa Braun’s farewell album had to be included here, even if only for one song, Ptaki czują jesień (Birds Feel Autumn), in which the musicians, using sparse sounds, managed to capture the melancholy that accompanies the arrival of the first cold days. However, this is not the only piece we can associate with the rainy season. Take, for example, Wzmocnienie światła (Amplifying Light), something that is desirable during the season of vitamin D deficiency.

[Patryk Zakrzewski]

Furia – ‘Polish Dead Autumn’, 2007

In Finnish, November is called marraskuu, which literally means ‘dead month’ or ‘month of death.’ Being exposed to this kind of poetics in everyday language and experiencing unfavourable weather conditions for most of the year has undoubtedly contributed to the black-metal scene’s becoming one of the hallmarks of Scandinavian countries (the cradle of this genre is, of course, Norway, but black metal has taken root in neighbouring states as well). However, one only needs to compare the current length of the day and the weather forecast in Katowice, where the Furia band comes from, with the forecast in Oslo or Helsinki to see that Poland also has solid foundations for this genre.

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Dzień czarny noc czarna

On their debut album, Furia paved the way for a new style of Polish black metal that did not look to the Norse gods or Norwegian forests but instead drew on traditions of Young Poland and folk beliefs, creating its own mythology from elements of the real world, such as the lunar landscape of Silesian slag heaps and wild suburban wastelands.

Nihil, the band’s leader, said in an interview for the magazine Dwutygodnik (Biweekly) that it is ‘universal music with a Polish spirit’. As he explained, ‘We have a specific atmosphere in Poland. I believe it sharpens the senses to – let’s call it simply – suffering. Although perhaps this word is a bit too grand’.

Whether there is too much pomp in it or not, Polish autumn on Furia’s album feels like a traumatic experience that leaves us with ‘fingerprints that three seasons won’t wash away’. This mood is reflected in the titles of the songs themselves, such as Nade mną mgła (Fog Above Me), ‘Dzień czarny, noc czarna’ (Black Day, Black Night) and finally the closing track heralding the arrival of something even worse – Idzie zima (Winter’s Coming). A similar mood can be seen in the titles of the band’s subsequent albums, which form a unique cycle dedicated to the most depressing months in Poland: Grudzień za grudniem (December After December, 2009), Marzannie Królowej Polski (To Morana, Queen of Poland, 2012) and Księżyc milczy luty (The Moon Is Silent Freezing Cold, 2016) [luty in Polish mean both ‘freezing cold’ and ‘February’, trans.].

Although I am far from being a metalhead, every year around the turn of November and December, when the days grow dreadfully short, my ‘metal days’ begin, during which I revisit some of my favourite albums from this genre, and Martwa polska jesień (Polish Dead Autumn) is one of them. Beneath the layer of dirt and noise lie beautiful, somewhat melancholic melodies and familiar rhythms that can strike a tender chord in the hearts of those living in the Central European abyss. After all, as they say, from darkness you came and to darkness you shall return.

[Patryk Zakrzewski]

Arkona – ‘Empire’, 1996

Black metal is most often associated with winter aesthetics. Each band dedicated to this genre has released at least a few cassettes featuring covers decorated with images of ancient forest landscapes blanketed in snow. Arkona, however, pioneers of Polish black metal, seek their darkness in autumn on their album Imperium (Empire). ‘Colours have lost their hue / Sadness has consumed every thought / The dream of oblivion – the joy of existence / Believe in nothing!’ shouts the singer in the song Epidemia rozczarowania i nędza duchowa (Epidemic of Disappointment and Spiritual Poverty). On other albums, often referencing winter, Arkona touches upon pagan themes. The golden Polish autumn put Grzegorz ‘Messiah’ Błoch, the band’s lyricist at the time, in a particularly nihilistic mood: ‘Chance is destiny / Everything is nothing, and nothing is everything’, he states in Każdy los to cień (Every Fate Is a Shadow). The highlight of the album Imperium is the song Jesienne cienie czekają na kolejną reinkarnację (Autumn Shadows Await Their Next Reincarnation), in which ‘Summer departs, the cold returns / Joy fades away, the chill swirls’.

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Skrajna Nienawiść Egoistycznej Egzystencji

Arkona’s compositions are raw and noisy, yet they’re also highly melodic. Synthesiser sounds emerge from the guitar storm and muffled percussion, creating an eerie, fairy-tale atmosphere. The Polish response to Dimmu Borgir’s symphonic black metal is rough but distinctive. Arkona still exists, continually reinterpreting Symphonic Black Metal in an unusual way and singing in Polish. Their albums are released by the French label Debemur Morti, which is associated with, among others, the experimental band Blut aus Nord.

[Filip Lech]

Drekoty – ‘Persentyna’, 2012

The autumnal atmosphere often permeates songs from the genre of, broadly generalising, new female indie pop. Barbara Wrońska and her band Pustki sang that ‘autumn has come, I’ve gone crazy’, while Soniamiki argued that autumn is a melancholic season even on tropical islands: ‘Leaves are falling from the palm trees / It’s autumn in Hawaii / There’s such sadness in my soul / That you left so suddenly / A quiet thunder shook the beach / The coconut of my heart broke / The bird of sighing interrupted its flight / As if a hundred scythes had cut it down’. In turn, in Ewa Sad’s song Grzyby (Mushrooms), autumn blanket wrapping becomes a starting point for reflecting on anthropocentrism.

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Drekoty - Tramwaj

However, my strongest autumnal associations are linked to Drekoty’s first album, which is explained by the opening track, Listopad (November):

I won’t go anywhere,

The pavement’s too short,

I’ll lie all day and all night, and the second day, and the second night.

Drekoty is a band formed by pianist and percussionist Ola Rzepka, who is also responsible for the compositions and most of the lyrics on the album (some were written by the poet Krystyna Myszkiewicz). Rzepka established the band together with pianist Magda Turłaj and vocalist Zosz Chabiera. Their debut album has something of the atmosphere of joyful home recordings, if we’re talking about recordings of the soundscape of a haunted house, with constant creaking, tapping and plucking. This impression is clearly created by the instruments they use: an out-of-tune piano, violin, zither and a Soviet Venta organ. The percussion is also captivating, with the drums and cymbals played in an exceptionally melodic way. At the same time, Persentyna is full of twists and turns: some songs remind me of recordings by the Ukrainian avant-garde group Cukor Bila Smert (e.g., Raut [Banquet]), while others lean towards electro-punk (Tramwaj [Tram]) or neurotic IDM (Za [For]).

[Patryk Zakrzewski]

Błoto – ‘Mycelium’, 2024

In return for carefully wading through all the gloomy autumn albums mentioned above, my colleague Filip Lech and I deserve a bonus for working in difficult conditions. Fortunately, autumn also offers many delights. One of them, as we have known since the days of Pan Tadeusz (Sir Thaddeus), is mushroom foraging. The woods are now empty, but this album can bring back pleasant memories of October gatherings.

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Błoto - Kozak

In the text promoting the album, the Wrocław musicians refer to the metaphor of mycelium as an intelligent network and a model of interspecies cooperation: ‘The complex, unstable contemporary world, which is falling apart into many pieces, needs the idea of mycelium, which copes very well in an environment degraded by humans and seemingly dead’. They also refer to what Olga Tokarczuk wrote about mycelium in Prawiek i inne czasy (Primeval and Other Times):

Mycelium is not a plant or an animal. It cannot gain strength from the sun because its nature is alien to the sun. It is not drawn to the warm and the living because its nature is neither warm nor alive. Mycelium lives thanks to the fact that it sucks up the remains of juices from whatever dies, whatever is decaying and soaking into the earth. Mycelium is the life of death, the life of decay, the life of whatever has died.

In line with this concept, Błoto’s album is a true parade of mushrooms. It begins with the calming, somewhat ambient Łysiczka (Magic Mushroom). Then comes Kozak (Birch Bolete), which is probably the closest to the fusion of instrumental hip-hop and dark jazz that the band’s previous albums are known for. Prawdziwek (Penny Bun) brings to mind the accomplishments of such jazz mystics as Pharoah Sanders, while Muchomor (Toadstool) is pulsating and sombre, yet somewhat cartoonish in its exaggerated atmosphere. Szatan (Satan’s Bolete) is accompanied by a frenzied batucada, while in Shiitake a broken beat is embellished with oriental percussion instruments. The result is somewhat paradoxical: mushrooms are often associated with something decrepit, and the material here is remarkably fresh.

[Patryk Zakrzewski]

Marcin Dymiter – ‘Postseason, Field Notes #11’, 2021

Po sezonie, Field Notes #11

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Autumn and winter at the turn of 2020 and 2021 – dark times of the pandemic. We accompany Marcin Dymiter’s binaural microphones on a beach somewhere between Sopot and Jelitkowo. In winter, at least in these two recordings, the sea is louder. We hear not only the author’s walking body and the cries of seagulls but also the calls of various other birds. There are far fewer human voices than in autumn, with the occasional barking of dogs in the distance. In autumn, the sea is a little calmer, and there are more people. In his book Notatki z terenu (Notes from the Field, Gdańsk, 2021), Dymiter writes:

By listening and field recording, it’s still possible to practise the ancient art of disappearing. To the point where the boundaries of ‘authorial culture’, the ubiquitous selfie and the constant urge to emphasise one’s presence, become blurred. Listening allows one to disappear, to reject the need to control the world. […] The phase of listening through a microphone is a moment of verification, mental effort and embracing the nuances of the environment that are ruthlessly captured by the microphone but treated leniently by the human analogue ear.

[Filip Lech]

Ewa Demarczyk – ‘Ewa Demarczyk Sings Zygmunt Konieczny’s Songs’, 1967

Ewa Demarczyk and Zygmunt Konieczny certainly spent many autumn evenings at Piwnica pod Baranami (Cellar under the Rams) in Kraków. The encounter of a talented singer and an experimental composer who expressed his artistic explorations most fully in film and theatre music initiated a trend for singing poetry in Poland. In this album, the singer known as the ‘black angel’ draws on lyrics by Miron Białoszewski, Bolesław Leśmian, Julian Tuwim and Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński, among others. The album became a genuine sensation, not only among Polish audiences but also on French and Soviet stages.

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Ewa Demarczyk - Czarne anioły

Today, Demarczyk’s career would hardly be possible because her music is too dark for large stages. Most of the songs presented here are about war, death or intense loneliness and suffering. Demarczyk sings the words of Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński in the song Deszcze (Rains), which closes her debut and most famous album:

I will be alone. Just me and the darkness,

and only drops, rains, rains,

getting quieter and quieter, painless.

We hope that autumn will not be so harsh for our readers.

[Filip Lech]

Published in Polish 11 December 2024

Translated by Agnieszka Mistur

Language English

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