My Review: ROZMAZANI - Hard Times

 ROZMAZANI - Hard Times  

Wonder.

The old scribe might have already finished with this word, concise and true. But the temptation to explain is too strong, so let us take a look at the second album of a duo that have demonstrated truly sublime ideas, quality and class, making the quality-quantity combination an irrefutable act.

Poland, so little in the limelight of industry insiders and the general public, is the place of origin of these fourteen tracks, the manifesto of a precious and essential artistic independence, to be carried within oneself without hesitation. The range includes massive doses of electronic music (it goes from Minimal, to Techno, to the most stylised Rave), without omitting, through the use of guitars trained to dream, an Alternative presence that does nothing but give the final kiss to an immense work, which takes us inside the couple's feelings.

Ewa Baran and Wojciech Szczygłowski - Woy242 /W242 (his artistic name) are the centre of gravity, the epicentre and the musical earthquake of a dynamic propensity towards rhythms and sounds that shake, lead to the dispersion of the senses, neutralising all opposition through the magic of their creative shell, which experiments, whirls and releases radioactive toxins of infinite beauty. We move continuously, to historical places and times, with a commitment to the affirmation of ideas by means of sensory and emotional photographs that are punk in attitude, an ouster of miles of life in an album that delivers to the world all the due anger which here becomes synthetic, but no less true. A rebellious record that teaches how many forms of alienation and the frantic need to break out of the shell of an existence suffocated by anonymity exist and must be considered.

Enchanting, enthralling, a chapter of beauty awaits to be treasured forever in your wise hospitality. One of the best works of recent years cannot know indifference...

Song by Song

1 - Hard Times

One of the two songs that anticipated the album's release and gives it its title is responsible for the opening and is resounding in the subtle atmosphere that permeates the musical structure, between melodic Techno and hypnotising Ambient. In it, Ewa Baran's voice is the means for her to become a perfect cyber priestess.

2 - Zamykam Oczy

The band's second track, featuring Ewa singing in her mother tongue, is the outpost on which the melody will soon rest, perfectly blending electronic music with synthetic breath. A majestic display of how feeling prevails over the mode of expression, as we are faced with a sieve that leaves beats and bass lines that are also words, not to define but to stimulate the senses.

3 - L.O.V.E

How do you dance with ROZMAZANI? With Darkwave echoes given by guitars with a license in images obtained with the maximum score as measured and non-exhibitionist, polite Techno coming in as an active wave and transporting us into perfectly syncopated rhythms.

4 - Bezgłos

Tricky, Massive Attack and company look intrigued at this sonic warehouse that is Bezgłos, a radioactive and sensual diamond, nocturnal with psychedelic sewage which makes light a Trip Hop chip inside a highly suggestive Ambient base.

5 - Jeziora Nieskończone

It's back to dancing, with a voice that scratches in a seductive and mysterious almost crooning, while the music, minimalist yet murderous, is rarefied in a hangar where hypothetical young people join adults for a track that smells of electronic embrace.

6 - Unspoken Words

Cabaret Voltaire, D.A.F., Pankow, Cat Rapes Dog, are lined up enchanted: how to bring the 70s into the following decades in 255 seconds. Obsessions, loops, sonic slowdowns, visions and words attached to emotional presence on the one hand and mental disconnection on the other, resulting in an extraordinary epileptic song.

7 - NINe Days Of Falling

Electronic sweetness: definitely not cold music! Take a ride in this bush, in this nocturnal mountain path, between piano chimes like mantras and the harsh nakedness of a structure of harmonies that make the pleasure of listening toxic. It ranges with the smell of Synthwave, which appears, seems to leave but then remains, making the song a powerful instrumental.

8 - Elementos Der Terror (Testiculo Cover)

Delirium must be subtle in order not to annoy: this is the feeling that envelops us, in the interplay of doubled voices, synth inserts and samples that make the whole thing fresh and capable of conveying continuous suggestions. Ewa and Woy242 /W242 enchant and the musical part, towards the end, reveals a sudden surprise, a change of rhythm and musical mode to further demonstrate the extent of their ideas.

9 Brylanty

It is Trip Hop that has found the future, a new form, without denying its past. And there's more: the sense of chorality and unidirectionality also comes through the two voices united, like the dance of a snake inoculating its splendid venom.

10 - Oddalenie

Light enters the darkness, in the notes pregnant of cuts, of a hypnotic drum machine and slabs of sound compacted to separate lightness from what is useless. The whole thing seems cancerous, sick and therefore perfect, a slow fright that second after second brings us a sensory fainting.

11 - Ciężar

The beginning is an evocative sonic parallelepiped, a malignant walk with vocals that sound like the recitation of a woman leaving the stage, the synth is in the Kraftwerk zone penetrating the melody like a seagull flying at low altitudes, among hills and moods full of sadness. 

12 - Thoughts speak to you

Brian Eno and Jean-Michelle Jarre inhabit the song's cloud in the first few seconds and then the train picks up a little speed, staying in the 80s, with the voice playing in crooning in the low and high registers, and then meeting a refrain that reminds us of the divine Marlene Dietrich. Ecstasy and melancholy give us a dance among bewildered senses, for a new gem from this duo unstoppable in creativity and quality.

13 - Szklana P

A puddle of oil in the midst of an electric discharge: this is the penultimate track that brings us Techno able to exorcise the past, for beats and stratagems which launch the band into the future, in a highly effective post-modern cabaret.

14 - Ostatni Taniec

You end up dancing again, like Eastern European robots, new rebel soldiers, lining up power and punishing it with a march that encircles and defeats it. If hypnosis serves to erase all opposition, then Ostatni Taniec is perfect. One dreams in a movie in which the future is made of fat, poisonous synths, of stop-and-go, of fierce flashes without the need for rumbles. 

A perfect, powerful album, capable of eroding triviality, for a future that is within reach of robotic dance steps...

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

31st January 2023

https://diffusereality.bandcamp.com/album/rozmazani-hard-times-phy125