A hidden gem of the Polish music scene. In the five-piece ||ALA||MEDA|| we can find members of many important bands, together they create a unique and highly original music based on a combination of jazz, krautrock spirals and live modulated analogue electronics. The festival will feature ||ALA|MEDA|| with a program for their new album Spectre 02, which is due out in April. On it, the aforementioned influences are joined by Afro-Caribbean rhythms, Portuguese batida or qgom, all wrapped in a warm cosmic psychedelic cotton.
||ALA||MEDA|| is the definition of the term supergroup, a set of individuals who are leaders in each of their other projects. The drummer Jacek Buhl is known from the line-ups of post-punk bands Variété or Trytony, but he is also active in the improvisational scene, the duo Piotr Michalski (bass guitar) and Łukasz Jędrzejczak have been together in bands like 3moonboys, So Slow or even well-known in the Czech Republic Javva, the percussionist Rafał Iwański (HATI or Innercity Ensemble) is a well-known ethnomusicologist and collector of instruments from all over the world. Perhaps the most important of the five is multi-instrumentalist and producer Jakub Ziołek, who with his band Stara Rzeka or in collaboration with Wladimir Zimpele has far exceeded the context of the Polish music scene. As ||ALA|MEDA|| (formerly Alameda 5), the five have been performing for a decade and have recorded four full-length albums, including this year's Spectre 02.
Read moreThe new release presents the band in excellent form, the six tracks delivering fascinating global music that cannot be pigeonholed and respects no boundaries or limitations. The dense and varied dance rhythms are complemented by industrial production and a clearly psychedelic message; Caribbean experimenters and handcrafted electronics from the African label Nyege Nyege are not far behind. The duo Phelimuncasi, who rap in the Zulu language on the track um'khonto, come from the latter. Several other guests appear on the album, but the core remains an all-embracing formation that boasts courage, a shared consciousness and a commitment to truly global production that puts borrowed influences into a whole new context.