By Irena Stevanovska
See Part I here.
Błoto – Grzybnia (Astigmatic Records, 2025)
Błoto is one of the best-known bands on the Polish jazz scene, with tours
around the world. The band is one of those that you fall in love with on
your first listen.
The out-of-the-ordinary harmonies make every kind of listener curious to check out
what the next thing will be. Their name, Błoto, meaning “mud,” connects
with the story of the band’s creation — they formed it during a tour with
EABS, just jamming when they had a day off between concerts. I’ve noticed
that often the most accidental bands become the most interesting ones; the
universe probably just puts things together so we can get great music.
Błoto is one of those bands that you are thankful exist. Every time they
announce something new, everyone gets excited to hear it. Their innovative
approach creates an immersive experience for many different types of
listeners.
Their last album — named Grzybnia, meaning “mycelium,” the hidden
underground brain and stomach of fungi — sounds exactly like a hidden
underground mind of a fungus. Organic, yet still abstract. That’s been
their style since their first album: a pure Slavic underground band with a
trailblazing twist.
The band consists of four members: Marcin Rak on drums, Marek Pędziwiatr on
piano and keyboards, Olaf Wegier on saxophone, and Paweł Stachowiak on
bass. Their distinct playing sets them apart from the rest because you can
tell they’re able to create very different types of music. That’s why they
combine genres here, but a lot of the time different instruments play
different styles. The drummer has an extremely eccentric way of playing,
which constantly makes the other instruments feel like they’re broken apart
while they play really cleanly. The bass often holds a sub line that comes
in from time to time. Meanwhile, the keyboard instruments always create
confusing, unexpected sounds — not typical for what people would usually
combine with this type of music. The saxophone, meanwhile, just plays a
straight-up jazzy harmony.
Their music feels as organic as the mycelium itself, so if you’re ready to
be taken through a magical forest, encountering all types of different
creatures and having a unique sonic experience, I highly recommend this
album.
BLED – Terra Incognita (Alpaka Records, 2024)
Terra Incognita is an ambient/electronic work with a hint of contemporary
jazz. Like the favorites of many of us here (especially me), it starts with
a slow lancing toward an area far removed from the ordinariness of life.
Terra Incognita – meaning “unknown land”, is the term once used on old maps
for places yet to be discovered. The album takes you to one of those. It
gives a one-of-a-kind experience of stepping into a place still
undiscovered at least for you.
In my imagination, it brings me to certain areas of the steppes. I remember
reading in a book by Eric Faye, Mes trains de nuit (“My Night Trains”),
where he writes about his travels on trains through Europe and Asia over
the years. There is a part where he describes the journey through Russia
toward Mongolia, where the train enters the steppes and everyone aboard,
not native to those lands, feels a deep awe. It’s the feeling of a place
we’ve never seen anything like before. The beginning of the album, paired with its title, brings the same sensation.
The music manages to transport you into a space that feels untouched,
unexplored by humans.
It’s one of those albums where the track titles perfectly fit the music
within. The third track—after “Mare Tranquilities” and “Wanderer”—is called
“Then and Now.” It starts with organic, natural sounds and ends with a more
electronic feel. It carries the same exploratory mood but shifts toward the
otherworldly. The next track, “Turbulent,” captures the very turbulence one
might encounter in unknown lands.
The band blends acoustic and electronic instruments, giving them the
freedom to create both the natural and the cosmic. The trumpet, played by
Emil Miszk—who also plays Mood Rogue and ocarina on the album—is fairly
consistent, adding an atmospheric background presence. The other member,
Sławek Koryzno, leans into the organic textures, playing most of the
percussion: drums, congas, and a Hohner Automatic Rhythm Player. To summon
the more unearthly tones, he also uses modular synthesizers and an Echocord
100. With these tools, one can easily imagine the many travels the music
evokes.
The journey of this album calls to mind the animated films of René Laloux,
like Fantastic Planet or Time Masters. It’s a kind of futurism one might
have imagined in the 20th century—not the destructive visions of the future
we often imagine now. An album full of dreaminess and imagination.
Królestwo – Patho Jazz (self-released, 2024)
A band that originally began through math-rock, post-punk, noise, and the
essentially Polish term Yass (jass), which arose in the ’80s in the
avant-garde Polish scene, explaining the fusion of genres played together
(especially jazz, improvised music, punk, rock, and folk).
This is the third release of this quartet, and it’s the most jazzy one
they’ve put out so far. Their first two LPs lean more toward math rock and
post-punk. In this release, it begins with a clean sound—the kind people
say tickles parts of the brain that can’t normally be reached. The
extremely clear mixing immediately gives a sense of what’s to come.
Everything just falls into its right place. It contains a deep, very clean
bassline, a sound that somehow gives stability—the ability to exist. The
drums don’t rush into chaos or dominate everything; they’re there just as
much as they should be: minimalistic but with great rhythm.
Since the band consists of only four members—double bass (Sebastian
Goertz), drums (Paweł Rucki), synthesizer (Joanna Kucharska), and piano,
Rhodes piano, synthesizer, guitar (Max Białystok)—on this album they’ve
brought in a few guests who add to the jazz feeling: trumpet (Dawid Lipka),
saxophone (Patrycja Tempska), clarinet and bass clarinet (Robert Dobrucki).
The drone sounds of the synths are almost constantly present in the
background, while the wind and brass instruments slowly emerge. At one
moment there’s a combination of a distorted sound with a trumpet layered
over it. It sounds wonderful, because it’s rare to hear something like
that. The jazzy trumpet against the dark, distorted texture gives a strong
sense of duality, making it hard to choose in which feeling to lean into.
Do you bring out the dark, demonic parts of yourself, the ones that scream
to come alive? Or do you let yourself be playful and fun, while your soul
is being caressed by the sound of the trumpet?
Most of the album carries this duality. It feels as if a jazz track is
happening, but at the same time another chaotic, noisy force is running
alongside it. Your body moves with the jazz, but your mind is being swirled
by the other sounds.
This is the most experimental yet most put-together thing I’ve ever heard.
It’s the kind of listen you need to sit with and fully absorb, just letting
the sound itself overwhelm you. In every track, they take their time to
build toward what’s coming. Each track is its own story. With each one,
you’re carried from one world to another, but every world feels deeply and
vividly shaped. It’s a place where time doesn’t exist, where the only flow
is the flow of instruments and the sounds they make.
So much is said with this album, without a word spoken. Even the things
that are said don’t feel like they were created by the band themselves; it
feels like they open a space for your own voice to speak inside, carried by
the beauty and intensity of sound.
Wood Organization – Drimpro. (Gotta Let It Out / Love & Beauty Music,
2021)
This duo earns its place on the list for its uniqueness. Though based in
Coppenhagen, one of its members brings Polish roots into the mix, so I’ll
take the liberty of including it here. Founded by well-known free-jazz
bassist Tomo Jacobson and drummer Szymon Pimpon Gąsoriek, Drimpro is a
haven for rhythm-section enthusiasts – myself included. Beyond bass and
drums, both musicians incorporate electronics, adding another layer to
their sound.
Their debut album in 2017 was well received and featured other great
artists like Franciszek Pospielszalski, Freya Schack-Arnott, and Lars
Greve. On this album, it’s hard to tell if there are guest musicians
because some tracks sound so rich and layered that it feels like a whole
orchestra is at work.
The album eases in with a slow drone ambient intro before morphing into a
deep trip-hop infused jazz groove, with playful drums weaving through the
background. It flows into broken beats and deep rhythmic basslines, keeping
a hypnotic pulse. Midway through, a transitional track signals the shift
into the album’s second half where the free jazz fully takes over.
Electronics become more noticeable, connecting to the album’s name, Drimpro,
a fusion of Dream and Improvisation, as described in their Bandcamp notes.
The second, lengthtier section opens like a dream, drawing you deeper into
its atmosphere. Shamanic drums pulse underneath, anchoring a mix of
unpredictable percussions. For the next 30 minutes, the album drifts
through layered soundscapes before closing with a track that introduces
vocals – adding yet another unexpected texture.
Throughout the album, Drimpro creates diferent moods: organic, dreamy, and
by the end, feverish – but the kind of fever dream you’re happy you’ve
experienced.
While compiling this list, I realized that, even though I was focused on
the new wave of Polish jazz, Polish artists have always been incredibly
creative in this area. As I mentioned in the review of Królestwo above, the
Yass (Jass) movement emerged in the 1980s, led by avant-garde musicians who
developed a frequently arrhythmic and highly improvised style of jazz. This
reminded me that the examples on this list represent only a small slice of
what the Polish jazz scene has to offer. Countless artists continue to push boundaries and create new forms of jazz, making it
one of the most vibrant jazz scenes in the world. Listening to their radio
Jazz Kultura from Kraków, for example, reveals a wide range of innovative
musicians and projects. Many remarkable artists didn’t make it onto this
list, but I hope it inspires readers to dive deeper into Polish jazz and
discover the vast universe of creative minds it holds.