Album Review: Glimmer by Jacaszek

Michal Jacaszek captured the hearts of many with his 2008 album Treny, a stunning blend of baroque melodies, delicately placed arrangements and subtly pulsing electronics. It was the kind of "modern classical" record that could be appreciated by listeners from any background, with alternating moments of melodic lucidity, trembling melodrama and impressive sound manipulation. The Polish composer might have lost some of that widespread goodwill with his follow-up Pentral, a release that sacrificed the emotional tumult of Treny for illustrative composition in an attempt to sonically map the inside of a church.

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In a December review for Wire, British critic Joe Muggs explored the way Berlin producer Anstam uses technology to emulate acoustic instruments-- and then, push those sounds to places that actual players in an orchestra could never go. Muggs invokes the concepts of "uncanny valley" and "trompe l'oreille," related phrases describing the phenomenon of fabricated artifacts and intelligences mimicking "real life" to the point of being indistinguishable. "The dividing line between the physical and digital worlds is fast fading away," Muggs writes in a prelude of praise for Anstam's Dispel Dances, "in the process posing new questions about our relationship to what we’re hearing.

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An immediately immersive work from the experimental Polish composer. Chris Power 2011 Polish composer Michal Jacaszek’s work blends modern electronics with the sounds of earlier eras to create music of great individuality. His first solo album, Lo Fi Stories (2004), reconstituted the melodies of music boxes and degraded tapes. Sequel, his second collaboration with the poet Mitka Malzahn, offered a skewed take on jazz and performance poetry.

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