Lutto Lento – Whips
Something is stirring in Poland. While there has always been a small but thriving electronic music scene in Warsaw – best represented, perhaps, by long-running imprints such as Monotype and Bocian – it’s only in recent years that the country’s producers have begun to pick up wider international acclaim. For those not schooled in the DIY ethics of Warsaw’s cassette culture, focus has naturally fallen on the work of Zambon, and his two well-regarded imprints: the disco-minded cut-up outlet The Very Polish Cut-Outs, and the more recent deep house stable Transatlantyk.
It was Zambon who introduced the World to Ptaki, a hugely talented duo whose dusty, off-kilter take on Balearica can be heard on one of this summer’s most impressive debut albums, Przelot. With hindsight, Ptaki’s sample-heavy style – crafted using a mixture of hip-hop, house and experimental production techniques – owes a lot to another Polish producer, Lubomir Grzelak, better known as Lutto Lento. He was recently featured on Transatlantyk’s fine Polo House compilation, but it was his 2014 12” debut for Charles Drakeford’s From The Depths imprint that really set pulses racing.
That was wonderfully summery, positive and, at times, thrillingly odd, featuring dusty and unusual tracks that doffed a cap to house and techno, whilst delivering something altogether more adventurous. It was made up of tracks originally featured on the obscure tape releases Grzelak has intermittently released since 2011. These were, on the whole, a lot more eccentric and experimental than those cuts Drakeford chose to showcase, and included intriguing forays into curious ambience, live acid jams, cracked techno and bizarre field recordings.
Grzelak’s latest 12”, for the admirable Where To Now? label, marks a new chapter in his career. It’s almost entirely made up of recently recorded material, and weaves together many previously explored musical strands on one typically eccentric and erratic package. There’s much evidence of his love of intricately chopped-up and manipulated samples on “Intro”, which creates an unusual rhythm out of little more than bursts of radio noise, wonky vocal stabs, and a whisper of fluid electronica. This style of dusty, oddball sampling also forms part of the instinctive textures of the dark and unsettling “Vengo”, whose industrial throb and swirling, filtered string lines suggest trouble brewing. It can also be found at the heart of “Maralut”, a hypnotic chunk of leftfield house that feels more like an exercise in experimentalism than a fully-fledged attempt at dancefloor dominance.
The title track, on the other hand, operates at the opposite end of the scale. The deep house beats – undeniably loose and off-kilter, as if crafted with the aid of an MPC and it’s famous swing controls – are bolder and clearer, and the cyclical melodies altogether dreamier. Again, there are plenty of unusual samples on display, but by and large they’re buried deep in the mix, with only whistles and blasts of screeching tyres noticeably audible. Even at his most dancefloor-minded – as on the tactile chords, distorted bass and forthright hip-hop samples of ghetto-Balearic smasher “Amerana” – Grzelak can’t dim his instincts. It’s perhaps his most endearing trait.
Matt Anniss
Tracklisting:
A1. Intro
A2. Marabut
A3. Vengo
B1. Whips
B2. Amarena
B3. Outro