Unsound HHV Records 2 Items

The 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, "Žaltys" connects with Rogińsk’s previous work, most recently his critically acclaimed 2023 album "Talàn".

"Žaltys" 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.

Yet while Eastern European folk music is a constant, enigmatic inspiration here—the track titles derive from various Lithuanian plant names—"Žaltys" 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.”

Working 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.

Making 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".

Rogiński 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.

Following acclaimed albums by Piotr Kurek, bela, and Antonina Nowacka and Sofie Birch, Unsound will release the album Shame by 2k88 on 28th June, on vinyl, as well as in digital format and on streaming.

On Shame, 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. Shame 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.

Sampling 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.

Jankowiak 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.