Welcome to the Dark Side: Polish Goth Rock

castle_party_festival_2_.jpg, default, Castle Party Festival, photo: Castle Party Festival press materials / https://castleparty.com, Welcome to the Dark Side:Polish Goth Rock

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Who are goths, what is Dark Independent, why did Tomasz Beksiński read gothic horror novels and why do strangely dressed people walk around the castle in Bolków once a year?

The roots of the goth subculture – although a more precise term today would be Dark Independent, Dark Culture or, as Poland’s neighbours to the west say, Schwarze Szene – lie in punk rock and its gloomier variations. Bands such as Joy Division, Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees or The Cure have been called ‘goth’. Where did the idea come from to call them this? It was largely a marketing ploy. Tony Wilson, Joy Division’s manager, used the word to advertise their music on Something Else, a popular BBC TV music programme that, although it aired for less than four years, featured nearly every major British band of the late 1970s and early 1980s – from The Clash and The Jam to Depeche Mode and U2. ‘Because their music is so disturbing, sinister and gothic, it’s not going to be played [on the radio]’, said Tony Wilson, Joy Division’s manager. Martin Hannett, the Manchester-based band’s producer, on the other hand, said that it was ‘dance music with goth undertones’.

Music critics, and consequently fans, increasingly referred to music as ‘goth’. The sound of goth rock was characterized by a simple melody, minor chords, reverb, feedback and distortion. The lyrics, like the iconography that accompanied the bands, often dealt with the ultimate topics and invoked the imaginative worlds created by Romantic literature and Gothic novels. The songs were about death, suffering, depression, unhappy or impossible love, the macabre, ghosts and the occult. The music engendered a specific fashion style that featured spiked hair, heavy makeup, and black clothes. An important place for the development of the goth subculture was a club in London called The Batcave (1982–85). A great variety of music was played on the dance floor; the only rule was ‘No Funk, No Disco’. The most classic example of a goth song is Bela Lugosi’s Dead by Bauhaus. Béla Lugosi, an actor born in Transylvania when it was still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, became famous for his roles in horror films, particularly for playing Dracula (in Tod Browning’s film made in 1931). He’s considered an icon of the goth style. In the film The Corpse Vanishes, in which he played a mad scientist, he declared that ‘a coffin is more comfortable than a bed’. Rumour has it that in his old age he came to believe this and started sleeping in a coffin. Another iconic actor who had quite an influence on the development of the goth style is Vincent Price.

The goth subculture soon stopped being associated solely with goth rock. People who identified with Dark Independent also listened to genres that were emerging from metal (goth metal, symphonic goth metal), new wave (dark wave, ethereal wave), industrial culture (industrial rock, EBM, futurepop, aggrotech). What did new wave, metal and industrial grind have in common? Concerts given by bands within the sphere of Dark Culture were often distinguished by refined production and a distinctive image created for the performers. There’s a good chance that when you go to a concert by a goth band, you’ll see a lavish set design and lighting. The musicians will almost certainly enter the stage in elaborate makeup and imaginative costumes. After all, the goth subculture is an heir to the theatricality of glam rock, but in this case the extravagant image applies not only to the musicians but also to the listeners of this music.

Goths from Sanok

It’s unknown when the first goths appeared in Poland. According to Mirosław Aleksander Miernik, author of an article titled ‘Od gotyku do Dark Independent. O rozwoju subkultury gotyckiej w Polsce po roku 1999’ (From Goth to Dark Independent: On the Development of the Goth Subculture in Poland after 1999), this subculture has been present here since the 1980s. Although it’s difficult to find any information about Poland’s goth ‘prehistory’, we know who was, and probably will always remain, a symbol of the goth subculture in Poland. We mean, of course, Tomasz Beksiński (1958–1999), a journalist, DJ and translator. He was the one who first introduced the Polish public to goth music, new romantic and many other phenomena on the fringes of mainstream culture.

Tomasz Beksiński, fot. dzięki uprzejmości producenta filmu "Beksińscy. Album wideofoniczny" — Tomasz Beksiński, photo: courtesy of ‘Beksińscy. Album wideofoniczny’ producer

When Tomasz was young, his father ignited his passion for music. Earlier he’d been interested in breeding hens, then parakeets. Zdzisław Beksiński, concerned about his son’s hobbies, decided to give him a tape recorder. At first Tomasz used it to record the singing of parrots, but eventually he fell in love with music. He and his father listened to thousands of records of classical music and rock. The young Beksiński was especially interested in progressive rock and learning English, which allowed him to understand the lyrics of his favourite songs.

Later he worked for Polish National Radio and, as befits a goth, enjoyed shocking others from an early age. Before he left his hometown of Sanok, he decided to publish his own obituary. He didn’t even tell his closest friends about his plans to bury himself alive, and only his grandmother knew about this artistic stunt. She decided to write a letter to Tomek’s parents, who were busy setting up their new apartment in the Służew district of Warsaw:

My darlings!

You can see what a ‘peaceful’ life I have with Tomek. I’m feeling so helpless. When he was at the cemetery, I was dying of anxiety. There’s nothing I can do about it. If it hadn’t been for the stunt with the obituaries, I wouldn’t be writing to you because you have enough to worry about and so much work to do […] I was afraid news of the obituaries would somehow reach you, which is why I’m writing this letter. Despite his explanations, I still can’t understand why Tomek wants to shock people.

I send you my love,

Mama

Beksiński Family Archive [Image Gallery]

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Beksiński explored not only music but also cinema. One of Beksiński’s greatest passions was, as you can guess, horror films. As a teenager, Beksiński described the film Scars of Dracula made by Hammer Studios in England in a letter to his high-school English teacher:

It had everything I expect from a horror film: the action took place in the 19th century, there was a dark forest, a deserted village, Dracula’s castle, a creepy servant, lots of bats smeared with blood, fire, thunder and great music.

His tastes didn’t change as he grew older. In his early thirties, he said in an interview published in Machina that he preferred gothic horror films set in the 18th or 19th century, without cars, telephones or lasers, in an eerie, uncivilized world full of crypts, ruined castles, cloaks, coffins, superstitious peasants, ghosts, werewolves, an aristocratic vampire and so on.

Tomasz Beksiński, fot. Wydawnictwo Znak — Tomasz Beksiński, photo: Wydawnictwo Znak

In 1982, he began his public radio career: he hosted programmes on all four stations of Polish Radio (although he was most strongly associated with Polish Radio 3), and later he also worked for RMF FM. He often prepared radio broadcasts with specific themes – for example, the literature of Edgar Allan Poe, in his own translation of course. He often presented the music of bands associated with the goth subculture, such as Bauhaus, Sisters of Mercy (a quote from the song Lucretia My Reflection adorned a wall of his room in the block of flats at 6 Mozarta Street where he lived), Xmal Deutschland, Clan of Xymox, XIII Stoleti, Legendary Pink Dots, Closterkeller, Fading Colours and others. ‘But it’s not true that at a certain point he gave his radio broadcasts the form of vampiric-goth sound spectacles’, Wiesław Weiss wrote in his book Tomek Beksiński. Portret prawdziwy (Tomek Beksiński: A True Portrait). ‘Yes, sometimes he did, but only about a dozen of his several hundred broadcasts of Trójka pod Księżycem ([Channel] Three in Moonlight) can be described this way.’

He’s said to have once confided to his fans about his desire to run for president and added that if he won, there would be a bat in every house. At this point it’s worth noting that Beksiński was an unusual radio host – maybe that’s why his aesthetic choices, often quite peculiar, had such a strong impact on his listeners. He answered many questions on the air. He also replied to every letter he received, sometimes spending whole nights writing his responses.

His approach to goth music was not completely uncritical. In 1995, he wrote:

I’ve really been listening to many so-called goth rock records for over a year now, and I’m yawning terribly: everything is just a carbon copy of everything else, as if the first records by The Mission and Bauhaus were an obligatory Bible. Every time I once again hear a gloomy guitar whining, a pulsating bass line, drums with a slight reverb and a guy who’s contracted laryngitis on purpose in order to sound creepy – I just give up.

In another article, he adds, ‘I’m already sick of goth rock in the classic sense of the term. All the albums by masters of this style and most of their apostles stink more of monotonous routine than does a several-week-old corpse in a dug-up grave.’

Polish goth music

The goth trend in Polish music hasn’t yet been studied; this aspect of the Polish underground is still waiting for someone to research it thoroughly. The precursors can be found undoubtedly among new wave bands. One of the first albums in which we can hear goth sensitivity is Nowa Aleksandria (New Alexandria, 1986) by Siekiera. An atmosphere of dread accompanying sparse, repetitive guitar riffs, the buzzing of cheap keyboards and lyrics sometimes made up of only a few words is impossible to imitate. Nowa Aleksandria certainly can’t be categorized as goth rock, but it’s worth looking at it through this prism. Another not-so-obvious proto-goth band was Wielkanoc (Easter). This Lublin-based band was active from 1987 to 1989. Their archival recordings can be heard on the album Dziewczyny Karabiny (Girl Rifles, 2011). Has anyone in Polish music ever come closer to the sound of The Cure?

Thumbnail — Pornografia, the band, 1989, photo: Tytus de Ville

One of the first obviously goth bands was Pornografia, formed by Arkadiusz ‘Tytus de Ville’ Sawicki in 1987. Two years later, they toured Czechoslovakia and were stars of the Jarocin Festival. The cassette 1989–1990 (1990) would never have been released if it hadn’t been for Wojciech Smarzowski, the band’s friend and admirer. He accompanied them as a photographer on their concert tours and dreamed of recording a music video for one of their songs. Sawicki recalls:

At his school – the famous Łódź Film School – Smarzol found a handwritten note attached to a blackboard, saying that someone needed to record a band ‘for credit’. It was an ad from a Hungarian student studying sound production. We went to record the song ‘Do prostego człowieka’ [To a Simple Person] because that was the song that mattered the most to Wojtek.

After Pornografia broke up, Tytus de Ville joined one of Tomek Beksiński's favourite bands – Fading Colours. The band’s members included the vocalist De Coy and Leszek Rakowski, who later was a co-organizer of Castle Party. The nearly two-hour-long album Black Horse (1995) is quite classic goth rock, in which you could hear the first signs of an upcoming change in style. Guitars were still the dominant sound, but keyboards playing ambient passages or barrel organ–like tunes reminiscent of horror movies were becoming increasingly important. Some tracks had a danceable beat – the musicians didn’t hide that they were inspired by techno parties. This can be clearly heard on the next album, I’m Scared Of… (1996), which was produced entirely with a computer and synthesizers. These recordings are slow and hypnotic. They’re quite heavy, sometimes loaded with goth pathos, ethereal vocals and samples straight from world music. One of the tracks features a guest appearance by Anne Clark, a new-wave singer held in high esteem by fans of Dark Independent and a frequent star of Castle Party. The goth style isn’t the only point of reference here, for important trip-hop albums were being released at the same time – everyone was listening to Massive Attack, Portishead and Tricky.

But the most recognizable Polish goth rock band is surely Closterkeller, often associated with Anja Orthodox (vocalist, songwriter and lyricist). What does the band’s strange name mean? Orthodox explained:

The name appeared very suddenly. Zbyszek Bieniak discovered it lying on the ground in a dark doorway. It was a bottle of Klosterkeller wine. I only changed the first letter so the name would be higher up on various alphabetical lists out there, because I don’t like to wait for anything.

It was one of Beksiński’s favourite bands – he thought it was the only Polish band in whose music you could feel a soul. He even liked their debut album, Purple, which received a rather crushing response from critics. In Magazyn Muzyczny, he mentioned that his friends had been suggesting Closterkeller’s music to him for a year, suggesting that it was ‘his type of music’. Others were scornful, saying it just plagiarised X-Mal Deutschland and Siouxsie & The Banshees. He said he had to listen to it, even though he wasn’t interested in Polish rock:

I always used to say that I love chocolate but hate products with artificial chocolate flavouring. I’m irritated by the artificial sound of the recordings made in Poland, the sluggishness of our pseudo-music industry and the megalomaniacal attitude of most artists, who imitate a few external features of selected Western music stars like mindless parrots. Not to mention the pretentious, predictable lyrics. For these reasons, more or less since the mid-1980s, I wanted nothing to do with any of it. And I still don’t. But I have to be fair. I like Closterkeller’s album.

Beksiński became friends with Orthodox and her band. In an interview with Wiesław Weiss, he recalls that he introduced her to new bands (cold wave rather than goth). He was also the first person to give her feedback on her literary and musical ideas.

All subsequent Closterkeller albums (except the live ones) were given the names of colours. Violet (1993) was a commercial success, and the band gave a great performance at the Festival of Polish Songs in Opole. Scarlet (1995) is suggestive of American metal: Pantera, Rage Against the Machine and Slayer. Graphite (1999) shifted further away from heavy sounds; it’s a very romantic and melancholy album. It was also Closterkeller’s last album to be reviewed by Tomasz Beksiński.

The leader of Artrosis, formed in 1995, was Magdalena ‘Medeah’ Stupkiewicz. Her band’s sound always revealed a fascination with electronic and industrial music, for bombastic guitar melodies were mixed with austere beats from drum machines and electronic effects. She usually sang with a clear, bright, powerful voice that dominated over everything else. Another distinctive and velvety voice of Polish goth music is Maja Konarska from the band Moonlight.

These are only a few of the most important Polish bands gracing the goth scene. It’s also worth mentioning Abraxas, Batalion d’Amour, Desdemona, Darzamat, T.R.H. and many other groups that have thrilled audiences at the Castle Party Festival in Bolków.

Having fun at the castle

The history of the Castle Party Festival began in 1994 at Grodziec Castle in Lower Silesia. About 300 people attended the concerts; among the performing artists one could hear Polish bands such as Moonlight, Daimonion, T.R.H., Pornografia and Fading Colours. Krzysztof Rakowski, the festival’s founder, claims that he only wanted to organize a concert for ‘his’ audience in ‘the right place’. The next edition of the festival lasted for two days and attracted 800 fans of goth music. The fourth edition of the festival took place in Bolków Castle and attracted about 1,500 people. The sixth edition of Castle Party was attended by 4,000 fans, not only from Poland but also from Czechia and Germany. In the years that followed, increasingly popular artists from all over the world performed at the festival, and the programme became more and more varied. Today it’s the second-largest festival in Europe devoted to Dark Culture, after the Wave-Gotik-Treffen Festival in Leipzig.

What kind of relationship does the town of Bolków have with the festival? In an interview, Krzysztof Rakowski, the director of the festival, said that the citizens of Bolków are its… attendees and fans. In an article titled ‘Ostry gotyk’ (Ferocious Goth) published in Polityka in 2003, Mariusz Urbanek quotes statements by the town’s residents. ‘It’s true that at first we were afraid’, said Helena and Mieczysław Olszewski. ‘They looked quite frightening, and nobody knew what they wanted’. Later, the residents of Bolków discovered that the people who attended the festival – the journalist calls them ‘masqueraders’ – needed to eat and sleep. Eighteen years later, hardly anyone treats the festival as a masquerade party – it’s one of the largest events in the whole Lower Silesian region. The organizers now invite musicians who are completely unconnected to Dark Independent – for example, Furia, Lech Janerka and Renata Przemyk.

Music of the soul?

Maciej Falski, for the purposes of his article ‘Duch gotyku i horyzont intelektualny’ (The Spirit of Goth and the Intellectual Horizon), published in 2008, conducted a survey among listeners of various types of goth music in which he asked them what, in their opinion, distinguishes the goth sound. Respondents spoke of beauty, sadness and hard-to-capture feelings such as a particular atmosphere. Words that are associated with the uncanny and are often reminiscent of themes explored by all things goth – such as the colour black, sadness, night, vampires – help to describe this atmosphere more accurately.

In response to the question ‘what do you think of when you hear the phrase “goth music”?’, one of the goth music fans who was interviewed said, ‘A melancholy type of rock music, combined with the aggressive sound of industrial and electro. For me, goth music is music of the soul’. Falski is struck by the fact that his interlocutors don’t attempt to define more precisely the music they listen to: the melodies, the construction of the songs and the manner of composition. I don’t see anything strange in this, for it would be difficult to find formal distinguishing features in goth music. After all, among people who identify with Dark Independent there are listeners of symphonic metal, industrial, new wave experiments and psychedelic trance. It’s worth pointing out that some schisms appear among the listeners of various genres. In the article quoted above, Aleksander Miernik mentions that EBM, futurepop and aggrotech were initially dismissed as cheap, trashy techno.

The goth subculture has very distinct aesthetic codes – people in Victorian dresses and vampire-style tailcoats are easy objects of mockery. When describing them, it’s easy to slip into exaggeration or sensationalisation. An example of such exoticisation of goths is the film Witajcie w mroku (Welcome to the Darkness, 2008), directed by Henryk Dederko. The opening scene presents a conversation between a young goth girl and Jerzy Prokopiuk, an eminent translator and expert on Gnosticism. A dialogue between devotees of darkness and this thinker, who was closely connected to esoteric traditions, had the potential of being a very interesting theme for the film. However, the director decided to devote more attention to demonic possession and energy vampires. Werner Herzog could have created a masterpiece under these circumstances, but Dederko presented us with a freak show filled with the most basic stereotypes.

When listening to goth music, we often have to deal with layers of kitsch or even trash. It’s a very unique aesthetic that repels many people. But shouldn’t the recurring presence of goth motifs in our culture give us a reason to reflect?

Translated by Scotia Gilroy

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