WITHOUT – my new EP

Hello Friends, here is my last EP, entitled “WITHOUT” – only digital, but sill, please listen and tell me what you think. And here is the story behind the music.

It all started in September 2017 when I was thinking about rehearsing with my post-punk band Restless Astronaut for a show. News of my father’s death came early in the morning while I was driving my car. I had to turn around and go the the hospital, stay strong for my mother and family, start preparations for the funeral. It was not easy, but as the only son, this was my duty. I had to postpone the time of mourning. But there was more bad news that autumn. Exactly one month later, Michał, one of my best high school friends passed away as well. I was devastated – we shared so many good memories: parties, sailing, hiking mountains and hitchhiking across the whole country. Furthermore, my father, Michał and I shared the same love for skiing. We skied together in the Polish mountains, in the Alps, we passed the ski-instructor certificates. It was simply impossible to believe that those two guys, who meant so much to me were dead. It was very difficult to talk about those emotions, so I simply took my guitar and started recording in the living room, the kitchen, the studio.

The music on this EP is composed using a guitar with effects, pedals, loops and processing. No other sounds were used. I wanted to use just one instrument, in the same way we three shared love for the guitar sounds.

Here is the BandCamp link. As this is a very personal release I don’t want to charge money for it – you can download it for FREE. But if you think that a little support in this time of loss is a good idea – I am really grateful!

 

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/embed/album/5Zin8hP9q0Qqc4pfMwlZ2Z

Stories… on Apple Music

https://geo.itunes.apple.com/pl/album/stories-of-an-old-man/id1217981334?mt=1&app=music

 

Stories of an Old Man – physical edition

Now you can get the physical edition of my new album. Handpainted cover limited to only 25 copies. (Grab one while you still can)

SOFT Recordings – Discovery 1

You can find my new track “Waiting For The Moon” on the new compilation by the SOFT Recordings entitled “Discovery 1“.

Discovery series aims to promote new artists and sounds in the experimental music community; including ambient, drone, electronic, noise and modern classical genres. It’s free.

https://softrecords.bandcamp.com/album/discovery-1

 

Boundless on Spotify and iTunes

If you like streaming services like Spotify, you can listen to my music there, too (also Deezer or Wimp). My last “Boundless” EP can be found there.

 

You can also get it on iTunes – just click HERE

Remember that you can still get the physical copy – HERE

New EP – “Boundless”

Boundless EP

This short “Boundless” EP was recorded in 2012/2013 and it was meant to be part of the bigger project with other artists which unfortunately wasn’t accomplished. The music shows the direction in which I started going back then. While recording I used some analogue synths, guitar and field recordings and lots of other stuff.

While preparing the physical release I took the photos not far from the place I live – in the glacial valley of the river Warta (3rd longest river in Poland). It is not the first time I go there to search for inspirations. That wild area appeared on the cover of the first Eta Carinae album long time ago. The tree you can see there does not exist any more…

I wanted to make something special. So here it is – each package contains black handmade cover with handpainted coverart, one of the unique photos 13×13 cm, developed on the mat photo paper and a vinyl-like black CD. (There were 25 copies and there are only 5 copies left, so hurry up)

GET IT HERE: https://bojanek.bandcamp.com/album/boundless-ep

Unique photo prints

Handmade design

 

 

Distortion Destroyed…

Here is my shoegaze EP entitled “Distortion Destroyed”…

The idea behind this album is pretty similar to one Vulfpeck had when they published “Sleepify”. They simply wanted to fight with the system – when Spotify pays about $0.006 for one listen, let’s make an album with silence, short tracks and ask our fans to listen to it. The finally got $20.000!

My EP does not contain silence. Tracks are short, but not THAT short. Still, the more you listen, the more I get of those $0.006 :-)

Thank you!

My new album – “Analogue” published in Australia

I am very happy to announce that my latest album entitled “Analogue” was published by an awesome boutique Australian label Twice Removed. The album was recorded in 2011 when I did not have a laptop. In order to record all ideas and the whole album I used the 4-track TASCAM taperecorder. It was a challenging experience full of constraints. I played all different guitars, kitchen utensils, I used contact microphones sticked to paper and all other possible things which surrounded me. I also cut the tape and glued it to make long loops on a reel-to-reel recorder. I hope you gonna like the music. Here it is:

Warm Winter Music | Recenzja Łukasza Komły

Piszący dla portalu nowamuzyka.pl Łukasz Komła napisał właśnie recenzję mojego ostatniego albumu “Warm Winter Music” wydanego na kasecie dla amerykańskiego labelu Twin Springs Tapes. Wszystkie kasety zostały już sprzedane (w ciągu niecałych 3 tygodni od ukazania się). Dziś album można dostać jeszcze w formie plików. Wykonałem też limitowaną edycję 10 CD-Rów, które były dostępne podczas mojego ostatniego koncertu w Cafe Belg, w Częstochowie. Zostały jeszcze 2 sztuki i są dostępne TUTAJ.

Recenzja z portalu nowamuzyka.pl poniżej.

Polska muzyka, ale zagraniczna taśma, która zawinęła się w zimowe promienie słońca.

Artysta postanowił przy pomocy muzyki uchwycić fenomen anomalii pogodowych, jakie można było zaobserwować pomiędzy Stanami Zjednoczonymi a Europą. W Polsce mieliśmy zaledwie dwa, może trzy tygodnie prawdziwej zimy. W przeciwieństwie do nas wschodnie wybrzeże USA zostało totalnie sparaliżowane przez zimę. Grzegorza Bojanka szczególnie zauroczyło ciepło, które panowało tej zimy w naszym kraju, a więc wziął urządzenie rejestrujące i wyruszył na spacer, aby złapać trochę nagrań terenowych.

Field recording to tylko jeden z wielu elementów pojawiających się w twórczości Bojanka. Taśmę „Warm Winter Music” wypełniły dwa długie nagrania. Na stronie A znalazła się kompozycja „Sometimes It’s Sunny In Winter”, w której autor postawił na brzmienie gitary akustycznej, harmonijki ustnej (niczym westernowy klimat), melodyki, a po drugiej stronie mamy elektronikę, trzaski i ambientowe tła. Bojanek powoli wciąga słuchacza w swój świat eksperymentów, przełamując syntetyczną elektronikę żywymi brzmieniami instrumentów.

Nieco inaczej przedstawia się sytuacja na stronie B, gdzie w utworze „Why Is It So Warm?” aż kipi od ciepłych dźwięków, podanych w niespiesznym tempie. Przyznam, że początek tego nagrania jest intrygujący, a zwłaszcza bardzo ciekawe wykorzystanie brzmienia kontrabasu w zestawieniu z elektroniką, odgłosami otoczenia i fortepianem (trochę w stylu Origamibiro). W kolejnych minutach do głosu dochodzi elektryczna gitara, będąca nieodłącznym elementem twórczości Bojanka. Jej barwa kojarzy mi się z tym, co artysta zaprezentował na swojej pierwszej solowej płycie „Live in May”. Choć długo wybrzmiewające akordy gitarowe Bojanka można też spokojnie ustawić obok dokonań Fennesza.

Z całą pewnością wnikliwi odbiorcy wyłapią na „Warm Winter Music” wiele nowych rozwiązań u Bojanka, jak też utartych schematów. Przede wszystkim pojawiło się więcej akustycznych brzmień, a mniej laptopowych fajerwerków, co oczywiście jest na plus. Rzecz jasna, artysta wciąż drepcze wokół ambientu, sennych i melancholijnych przestrzeni, lecz tym razem udało mu się skanalizować ambient i wypuści go na bardziej dzikie i swobodne tereny.

Słychać, że Bojanek coraz odważniej sięga po żywe instrumenty, czego dobrym przykładem jest jego ubiegłoroczny krążek „Constraints”. Na kasecie „Warm Winter Music” pokazał, że może jednak warto odciąć ambient – od nieustannego dopływu elektroniki wspomaganego wirtualną mocą Abletonu, i dać mu więcej świeżego powietrza w postaci dźwięków gitary, fletu, harmonijki czy kontrabasu. Nie będę ukrywał, że wciąż czekam na jeszcze bardziej odważne i brawurowe posunięcia ze strony Bojanka. Jednak należy podkreślić, że „Warm Winter Music” jest jedną z najciekawszych pozycji w dyskografii polskiego twórcy.

 

Grzegorz Bojanek ~ Warm Winter Music REVIEW

Grzegorz Bojanek ~ Warm Winter Music.

Great review of my album by Richard Allen from A Closer Listen

“Everyone talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”  Mark Twain’s statement is true in one sense, but false in another.  We may not be able to change the weather, but we can change our reactions, something Grzegorz Bojanek accomplishes on Warm Winter Music.  The album was written as a response to an extremely unusual winter, which covered most of North America in snow while leaving Europe relatively warm and dry.  (And who can forget the springlike temperatures at the Winter Olympics?)  In New York, 2014 was the year that cancelled out another famous saying, “in like a lion, out like a lamb”, as five inches of snow fell on the last day of March.  But composing in Poland, all Bojanek could do was imagine a winter that never seemed to arrive.  “In order to remember this warm winter,” he writes, “I felt like recording some warm sounds.”  The tape fits snugly in the pocket like an extra pair of mittens or sunglasses.

Side A, “Sometimes It’s Sunny In Winter”, is the colder side, despite the artist’s intention.  Beginning with a static wind and the crunch of boots on snow (and where did he get the snow?), the track adds a sound like chalk or the rubbing together of hands before a slow drone begins to rise.  The electronics kick in, dancing around the field recordings like snowflakes around dust modes.  When the guitar enters, it sparkles on the sonic ripples like the sun upon a lake.  The electronics pile up in stutters like snowdrifts, lending the track a sense of accumulation.  As our friends at Headphone Commute would say, this is “Music for Watching the Snow Fall Slowly in the Moonlight”: pure, clean, evocative.  In terms of timbre, the track seems like the direct follow-up to 2012′s Remaining Sounds, although 2013′s Constraints was released in between.

“Why Is It So Warm?” is the amusing title for the B-side.  (We all know the answer, but admire the wide-eyed question.)  Of course, certain parties in the States insist that their cold weather stands as sound evidence against global warming, since the weather in the United States is obviously the final argument.  Bojanek breaks out the instrument box, making good use of the flute in the second half.  The track is a friendly ode to a forgotten season, a painted winter that looks different from the real thing.  The implication is that Bojanek misses the classic winter, despite its potential to wreak havoc.  Meanwhile, back in the States, The Weather Channel is rethinking its choice to start naming winter storms, having pushed up against the final letter of the alphabet.  The season may mean different things to different people, but winter lovers will likely agree on one thing: this intercontinental, seasonal meditation is worth having in any collection.  (Richard Allen)