Rafal Mazur & D'Incise Electro-Acoustic Quintet at Alchemia (08.05)

by Krzysztof Penarski

Among the late occasions to see Rafal Mazur's activity on Krakow's improvisation scene this was the most unusual combining both the electro and acoustic side of improvisation as three different nations on the stage.

Actually the musicians played in the middle of the room, surrounded by the audience, with speakers situated on all for corners of the room making for quite unique sound scene experience (unique for a concert as the 'sourround sound' is now something quite obvious in a home cinema). 

In such events what excites me the most is quite frankly not the music itself but the possibility to see the laptop whizz produce sounds in a way that escape my cognitive capabilities. Ludger would use some kind of touchpad, and he started with magnifying the air-conditioning noise in the room. D'incise, apart from using the laptop would also bow small gongs, use the wooden table, metal plates and other objects. Jonas Kocher's playing was pretty minimalistic, as he would create dark and brooding backgrounds on the accordion. Rafal would keep the touch of the strings lighter and more abstract than usual, utilizing bow quite often, plucking gently, playing the bass guitar like a cello (which was his primarily instrument). The music was quite minimalistic, dreamy-like, somehow hypnotic, exploring different textures. Tomek Choloniewski did a good job of stirring the proceedings every now and then with a sudden cry or thundering drumroll.

Definitely and intriguing performance although with this kind of music-creation it's really different to give any kind of quality evaluation as this music kind of comes firectly from the strenght of the individuals playing, but then gets zen, looses the sense of individuality, becomes this kind of formless, shapeless energy cloud. Which can be as much disturbing as relaxing experience, or a mix of both sometimes.

D'incise - electronics, sound objects
Jonas Kocher - accordion
Ludger Henning - electronics
Tomek Chołoniewski - drums, percussion
Rafal Mazur - acoustic bass guitar


Alchemia. Krakow. 08.05.2011

Ray Dickaty, Michal Dymny, Tomasz Choloniewski at Cafe Bethel – 9.12

Now this came to my attention at the very last moment (thank Facebook for invitations :) and while both Michal and Tomasz are active on local improvisor's stage in Krakow and I knew their playing, Ray Dickaty was a new name, quick look around the web and I was already curious about hearing improvise a guy who played with a rock band – Spiritualized, and visit to his myspace page reaffirmed my decision to go to the place.

Ray plays tenor, Michal is on electric guitar with an array of strange or common objects (plastick sticks, metal plate, electric razor, comb) and Tomasz, apart from regular drums set, a table full of metal bowls (looking Ikea) and enamel pots (from Olkusz) that played with drumsticks sounds a bit like marimba maybe. They start and guitar puts in the rhythmic drive with fingers drumming the bass strings, then moving to more spare notes, disjointed, abstract. The music gets a nice forward drive provided by Tomasz or Michal, sometimes both, with rock dynamic and its immediacy sometimes coming forward. Great group interplay, sometimes playing some kind of musical catch and run, at other moments longing howls short sound outbursts on saxophone over drone background provided by electric noises on strings. Group moving swiftly between hushed and overblown, melodic labirynths and some simple two or three notes motives, tribal or rock drumming and rhythm-less sounds with pulse all over the place, like dots and lines on some abstract painting. Never staying too long in one place, creating a series of miniatures, divided into pieces (1 st set, 4 improvs), or linking them one to another with some sudden turns and twists (2 nd set, 1 suite-like improv). With saxophone quite often in the background and Michal on guitar taking the lead part (finding some great sounds with the guitar on his lap, and metal plate over the strings, drumming on it with fingers, plastick sticks or razor machine). Overall great concert and it's inspiring to see so many places and musicians locally engaged in free improvisation music.

Hopefully the place will stay open for this kind of performance since it was the first (or one of the firsts) events of this kind in there.