{"title":"Unsound","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"shame-2","title":"Shame","description":"\u003cp\u003eOn \u003ci\u003eShame\u003c\/i\u003e, producer 2K88 (Przemysław Jankowiak, fka 1988) invokes the era and spirit of PL Sound, a local genre inspired by British soundsystem music but infused with the social, urban, and sonic themes that developed during Poland’s post-communist transformation. \u003ci\u003eShame\u003c\/i\u003e is a progressive, bass-fueled transmission built from scraps of hip-hop’s past; it’s a cinematic vision of Y2K Polish rap that’s in constant flux, where every detail is just as important as the whole structure.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSampling the Polish canon of beats from the low-rent districts of the nineties, 2K88 plunders tracks already based on samples and channels the experiences of the generations that grew up with those sounds, struggling and celebrating with them. And just as he did with his previous projects Etamski and 1988, 2K88 draws out, processes, and ages his elements in an echo chamber, asking questions and formulating answers.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eJankowiak works on the fringes of genre: traces of ambient, dub, rap and jungle flicker into low-lit urban rhythms, chunky nightclub basslines and paranoid production touches. This is in keeping with his new, futuristic handle, 2K88. Not for a second does he succumb to today’s omnipresent nostalgia, instead putting reconstruction before deconstruction — he finds whole worlds in his scraps, and in the long-gone turn-of-the-millennium period, whose liminal qualities feel like a precursor to the unease of the present moment.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Unsound","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50443050910027,"sku":"2208740","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/Shame_9526346e_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727008007"},{"product_id":"zaltys","title":"Žaltys","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe new album by Polish guitarist Raphael Rogiński is named after the grass snake Žaltys, a revered household spirit in Lithuanian folklore, and explores themes of Eastern European mythology and nature. As a conduit of cultural exchange, \u003ci\u003eŽaltys\u003c\/i\u003e connects with Rogińsk’s previous work, most recently his critically acclaimed 2023 album \u003ci\u003eTalàn\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eŽaltys\u003c\/i\u003e is deeply rooted in the rolling hills of the Suwałki region, in the northeast of Poland, where Rogiński spent childhood vacations and became intrigued by the music he heard from nearby Lithuania. Later, it was on the border with Dzūkija in Lithuania that he bought his first electric guitar, recording soundscapes on a four-track recorder in the forests; he returns to those techniques on this album.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eYet while Eastern European folk music is a constant, enigmatic inspiration here—the track titles derive from various Lithuanian plant names—\u003ci\u003eŽaltys\u003c\/i\u003e is (like all of Rogiński’s work) impossible to pin down, drawing on jazz, American primitivism, and a pervasive mysticism. Infused with a specific culture and place, the album contains a sense of memory, time passing, wonder, and loss. The music, Rogiński says, “is a return to the moment when my brother and I laid down in a boat near the Lithuanian border, floating on a lake at night and looking at the stars in the sky, which always seemed closer to us there.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWorking with Warsaw musician and producer Piotr Zabrodzki, Rogiński created what he describes as “guitar piano”. Rogiński and Zabrodzki made the whole studio resonate while recording, to achieve a sound “as if the wind was playing the strings”. He continues, “We connected some low-voltage effects to powerful old amps and a Leslie speaker, and put unusual sets of strings on the guitars.” For the first time on a solo album, Rogiński employs overdubs to create layers on several tracks, while other compositions are pared back, variously stark, harsh or simply beautiful, exploring his deep relationship with his instrument.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMaking a guest appearance—including on the first single “Šilinis Viržis”— is musician and singer Indrė Jurgelevičiūtė, a member of Merope, a band which draws more directly on Lithuanian folk forms. The two artists have been friends for years, but had never managed to record together, even though they share similar inspirations (and recently performed live at Unsound and Ephemera). Now Jurgelevičiūtė sings and plays the kanklės—a Lithuanian plucked string instrument or chordophone closely related to the zither—on two songs on the album. Zabrodski also plays piano on “Šilinis Viržis\".\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRogiński has turned the mastering over to Joe Talia, a frequent collaborator of Oren Ambarchi who is known for his skills with guitar recordings. The cover is by Marcin Janusz, a Krakow painter who, like Rogiński, finds inspiration in nature and the human body’s relationship with the world.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Unsound","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50446913110347,"sku":"2212048","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/a3409157057_65_ba4e3015_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727066039"},{"product_id":"plays-john-coltrane-and-langston-hughes","title":"Plays John Coltrane and Langston Hughes","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eRaphael Rogiński’s Plays John Coltrane and Langston Hughes\u003c\/i\u003e is an expanded reissue of his 2015 album, previously unreleased on vinyl and long out of print on CD. It has only grown in stature over the years, for Rogiński’s solo guitar interpretations – or reimaginings – of John Coltrane, which draw on the guitarist's unique and immediately recognizable style, rooted in jazz, blues and global folk idioms.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Unsound","offers":[{"title":"Black LPx2","offer_id":51246075117899,"sku":"2227797","price":28.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/Plays_John_Coltrane_and_Langston_Hughes_3345c65a_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1739231688"},{"product_id":"hiraeth-1","title":"Hiraeth","description":"\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThere’s no direct English translation for the word “hiraeth”. In the Welsh language, it describes a form of longing for an intangible something, somewhere or someone that no longer exists. Sofie Birch and Antonina Nowacka draw on the concept to guide their second collaborative album, a suite of vulnerable, open-hearted improvisations and reflections that attempt to grasp an image of the past that’s chimeric, dissolving almost as soon as it materializes. The duo’s process follows the same distant beacon; unlike Languoria, their critically acclaimed debut, Hiraeth is, at heart, an acoustic record, informed by in-person improvisations with voices and string instruments that gesture to an era before computers, AI and DAWs. It’s just as lush, but Hiraeth is warmer and more muted than its predecessor. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eNowacka and Birch conceived the album in the wake of a slew of collaborative live concerts, spurred on by serendipitous improvisations and an interest in paring down their setup. Unsound arranged a retreat in Sokołowsko, an idyllic village nestled in the verdant hills of Southern Poland, close to the Czech border. Sokołowsko surrounds a large ruined sanatorium that’s rumored to have inspired Thomas Mann’s 1924 novel The Magic Mountain, and has long been a magnet for artists. The two took the opportunity to rethink their approach completely, arriving with just a guitar, a zither and a portable Nagra reel-to-reel machine. Recording directly to tape, they sketched out ideas with just their voices and instruments, reflecting their surroundings without being distracted or mediated by modern technology. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e“We wanted to get away from screens as much as possible,” says Birch, “to bring to the world something vulnerable and honest. Without advance preparation, every day we went out into the open air, finding places to sit, during sunset or the midday sun. We discovered new tunings on our instruments, picked up a melody, and started the machine, playing over \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003eand over till we got a take.” In the autumn, they met again in a Copenhagen studio, sparingly and carefully layering old synths and organs to add more depth without muddying the mix. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBoth Nowacka and Birch sing throughout, their voices threading the acoustic instruments and tangling with each other, almost becoming one. But it’s the environment of Sokołowsko, “the birds and the light, even the wind playing against the harps,” that’s woven into the music’s lining. Affected by time spent meditating and in nature, as well as the fact that Birch was pregnant whilst recording, the album feels alive and remarkably present. Even the sound quality of the tape machine gives Hiraeth a tactile, organic quality, as Nowacka puts it, “like being in a warm bath.” \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThey still have the raw recordings from Sokołowsko on old reels, physical souvenirs of their time spent making music in a “habitat for intuitive songs, a little ecosystem, alive and spirited.” The outmoded gear and remote setting helped the duo disengage from the modern world for a few moments and imagine an existence that’s been lost to time and nominal progress. With digital technology receding into the background, Nowacka and Birch had space to make “intuitive connections with frequencies and people,” as Birch explains. Hiraeth is a testament not to nostalgia, but to the power of kinship. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Unsound","offers":[{"title":"LP - Black","offer_id":51973585764683,"sku":"R2634-2761","price":26.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/2000x2000bb_3cf05681-fe67-4d66-a12a-58825c6378d4.jpg?v=1749234605"},{"product_id":"ghil-dieg-arda","title":"Гільдеґарда","description":"\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWhen a Russian missile struck the ground not far from my studio in Kyiv, I vividly remember how my body reacted to the explosion, milliseconds before my mind did. That traumatic explosion reduced my essence to a primal state. There existed nothing but dread—the kind that, in scripture, accompanies the appearance of angels announcing, ’Be not afraid’. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe visions of Abbess, composer and mystic Hildegard von Bingen were preceded by bright, excruciating flashes of light. Modern medicine reduces them to cluster migraines, one symptom of which is the retinal aura, often accompanied by blurred vision and blind spots. Hildegard’s music can place great demands on the bodies of its performers, emphasizing uncomfortable intervals and the wide distance between the lowest and highest pitch. In comparison, Gregorian chant, the liturgical standard of the time, represents a tempered attempt to grasp God intellectually; indeed, Hildegard’s music was once described as a stick of dynamite thrown into a Gregorian chant. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThis album is not a historically informed performance. Hildegard’s persona and music are a starting point—a distant mirror, akin to the shield of Perseus, used to reflect Medusa. It allows us to reflect, comprehend, externalise, and transcend traumatic wartime experience, reinstating the embodied origins of Christianity, which contained suffering but also offered the promise of transcendence. Andriana-Yaroslava Saienko emphasises this physical aspect of Hildegard’s music by drawing on authentic Ukrainian folk singing, a form that survived despite efforts by the Soviet occupation to replace it with a simulacrum that is naive, harmless, and devoid of contradictions—an attempt to ‘civilise’ the body by disembodying it.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe musical approach is also informed by my ongoing practice of reimagining early music in modular synthesis. I accompany Andriana-Yaroslava’s fiery singing with drones—extended sounds that also occurred in medieval music. The drones alternate with improvisations, one taking its starting point in medieval polyphony, the other working with the concept of the interchangeability of sound and light, referring both to Hildegard’s visions and the space in which we recorded the album: the Cistercian abbey of Sylvanès in Occitania, known for contemporary stained glass windows whose patterns reference the dispersion of acoustic waves inside the church. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eThe album features two compositions by Hildegard von Bingen: O Ignis Spiritus Paracliti (O Fire of the Spirit and Defender), dedicated to the Holy Spirit, and O Tu Suavissima Virga (O Sweetest Branch), in honour of the Virgin Mary. Both pieces are performed radically slower than usual, expanding in time and space. On vinyl, the compositions are designed to reflect one another and can be listened to in either order. In the digital edition, there is a bonus track titled Zelenaia Dubrovonka (The Green Oak Grove). Based on a Ukrainian folk song from the Polissia region, Andriana Yaroslava adapted the lyrics to reflect our contemporary reality. The green oak grove does not rustle with the wind; instead, it resonates with a different sound—perhaps the missile that struck near my Kyiv studio. \u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Unsound","offers":[{"title":"LP - Black","offer_id":51973635834187,"sku":"R6029-3034","price":26.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/2000x2000bb_b09d2722-b971-453e-978c-50ad2e7b94f8.jpg?v=1749234776"},{"product_id":"songs-and-bodies","title":"Songs and Bodies","description":"\u003cp\u003eSongs and Bodies is best described as hypnagogic post-rock, an impressionistic blur of dissociated riffs, jazzy rhythms and half-heard voices that casts a beguiling digital silhouette of '90s indie music. The album began as a personal experiment, a question that emerged as Piotr Kurek cast his mind back to the era that birthed bands like Gastr del Sol, Bark Psychosis, Labradford and The Sea and Cake. Curious how this music might sound in today’s cultural climate, he started recording sketches at home on guitar and keyboard, applying the same advanced processing, editing and manipulation techniques that had nourished his last run of albums. Early on, he brought in drummer Mateusz Rychlicki and bassist Wojciech Traczyk, layering their performances into the evolving material. These ideas might have remained in that unvarnished state had Unsound not suggested a live performance of the work in October 2024. Spurred by the invitation, Kurek hardened his resolve, finishing a crumpled, uncanny set of half-songs that extend the chimerical sonic universe of the jazz-inspired Smartwoods and its baroque predecessor Peach Blossom.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNot an exercise in nostalgia, Songs and Bodies is an examination of the '90s and '00s experimental rock canon that isolates its humanity as the world stares down a new technological dawn. At a glance, Kurek's songs are remarkably organic, diaphanous guitar-led meditations embellished with era-specific organ and electric piano vamps, cryptic vocal utterances and dusty drums, but it's all an illusion. Listen a little closer and the wrinkles appear—the robotic, garbled articulations, awkward tempo fluctuations and charming hiccups.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eKurek distills these vulnerabilities and blemishes to present a deeply personal but relatable abstraction of familiar sounds and gestures. It's the closest the composer has come to old-fashioned songwriting, but the end result is the same: an invitation to look beyond the frosted glass of an increasingly digital existence.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Unsound","offers":[{"title":"LP - Black","offer_id":53289448931659,"sku":"R1447-3273","price":26.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/UNS013_PiotrKurek-Songs_Bodies-1LP.webp?v=1756733858"},{"product_id":"repercussions","title":"Repercussions","description":"\u003cp\u003eKAKUHAN haven't released much, but what's out there is some of the most astonishing hybrid electroacoustic music that's emerged in the last few years. Owing as much to Autechre as it does to Arthur Russell, it's dizzyingly psychedelic music that flits between wild free improvisation and obsessive, micro-edited precision, unclassifiable rhythmic and tonal experimentation that nods to the renaissance era and the contemporary dancefloor sometimes in the same breath. And in 2023, not long after the release of their now-classic debut album Metal Zone, KAKUHAN were invited to perform live at Unsound in Kraków. The duo were offered the opportunity to collaborate with a local artist, so after serious consideration decided on percussionist and musicologist Adam Gołębiewski, a veteran improviser who's performed and recorded with everyone from Yoko Ono and Thurston Moore to Mats Gustafsson and Ken Vandermark.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHino and Nakagawa were struck by Gołębiewski's unique tone and his very specific, immediately recognizable approach to drumming, realizing immediately that the collaboration would stretch their concept even further. \"Personally, I was looking forward to hearing how Hino's rhythmic sequences and Adam's percussion would interact,\" says Nakagawa. But it's Gołębiewski's interaction with his cymbals particularly that bridges a gap in KAKUHAN's sound, existing in the space between Nakagawa's cello and Hino's stuttering samples. In fact, the performance was so successful that the trio headed to Krakó's KPD Studio shortly afterwards, dubbing an exclusive session with engineer Rafał Drewniany that would become Repercussions. The session's vision is captured perfectly by the album cover, a painting from Polish artist Alicja Pakosz that shows a knife edge splitting a jet of water. It's the relative sharpness of Gołębiewski's sound that defines this project, cutting through Nakagawa and Hino's well-worn musical rituals and creating something new in the process.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUsing a bow to extract eerie metallic resonances from his kit, Gołębiewski often sounds like another string player, punctuating Hino's exacting rolls and Nakagawa's blood-curdling pizzicato echoes with knife-edge squeals on opening track II. And when the flurries of beats vanish completely on VII, Gołębiewski and Nakagawa are left to create xenharmonic ambience with their scraped, atmospheric drones, letting Hino's low-end rumbles and boiled textures suggest a rhythm from the periphery. Nakagawa's cello practically sings on 'IV', sounding more like woodwind or bird calls than strings, and Gołębiewski acts as a cracked mirror, replying with uneasy scrapes and acrobatic rhythmic bursts that neatly augment Hino's complex electroid sequences. Not jazz exactly, it's hallucinatory expressionism that straddles the line between harmony and dissonance, control and chaos or human and computer.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Unsound","offers":[{"title":"LP - Black","offer_id":53396506345803,"sku":"R2673-9084","price":26.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/UNS014-CLASSIC103LP_KAKUHAN_AdamGolebiewski-Repercussions-1LP.webp?v=1758035675"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/collections\/unsound.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}