Polo house, the Baltic beat, and the rise of the Polish electronic music underground is profiled by Matt Anniss.
There is little new about crafting re-edits, remixes and original productions out of a vast number of samples. However, Warsaw-based duo Ptaki have an obsession with solely mining Eastern European music – and principally Polish releases – for inspiration that has given their material a freshness that’s often lacking in similar cut-and-paste exercises. To date, their releases have been frustratingly sporadic, but rarely anything less than impressive. They famously made a splash with two high-grade edits on the first Very Polish Cut-Outs 12” – the lolloping jazz-funk goes disco-house chug of “Krystyna” and the lilting loop jam “Marek” – before emphasizing their Balearic credentials further with the sublime Jak Ptaki 7”, which doffed a cap to hip-hop, jazz and easy listening on one side, before moving towards deep house and reggae on the other. Last year’s Kalina 12” for L.A. label Young Adults was arguably Ptaki’s strongest to date, flitting between sun-kissed downtempo jams and lilting dancefloor shufflers.
For those of us who review music for a living, the laziness of both artists and labels can be a constant source of frustration. This is particularly true when it comes to the humble remix. So often an afterthought or a simple marketing exercise, the power of the remix has waned in recent years thanks to a combination of sound-alike versions, limp revisions and needless, big name tweaks. That’s not to say that inspired, next-level remixes aren’t being released – see Maxmillion Dunbar’s schizophrenic, juke-goes-jack revision of Adjowa’s synth-laden “Science of Soul”, or Cloudface’s inspired, pitched-down new age house take on Bantam Lions’ “Recollections” for recent examples – it’s just that they seem increasingly few and far between.