Flower and Pines - Unconditional Love (2025)

I remember when their magical EP Hnieŭ brought a sense of difficult to locate musical unorthodoxity. I can't say what genre the music belonged to, but it's usually a really positive thing for me. This year, the Belarusian duo from the Polish city of Wrocław are back in the game with their longest release to date and the magic is back.

I feel like the record is slightly less experimental than the previous one, but maybe it's due to the fact that they now create their music in English. And in English they somehow sound like the most famous Polish contemporary band, Trupa Trupa. This is an art rock world class level that should be out there, being appreciated by another Iggy Pop or whomnot. Especially that it is slower, less rocky and most artsy, in some moments closer to post-rock with vocals, sometimes it's tribal like folk liturgy combined with a demonstration anthem. How is it all of the things while still sounding like a coherent whole?

It's also a "reflection on [the band's] worries, anger, and grief" dressed in different forms, such as "a memorial service, a battle cry, or a manifesto of humility. It could be anything, depending on your perspective." This reinforces the impression of a strong diversification of the content and I like the idea that it was intentional to appeal o whoever is listening. After all, we have so much to worry about these days that it may be impossible to talk about it one musical language.

Unconditional Love costs 5 EUR (21 PLN).

Check: Dogs

Country: Belarus/Poland

Genre: art (post-)rock

Label: Requiem Records

:bandcamp:

:facebook:

:instagram:

:soundcloud:

:youtube:

:spotify:

Give Up to Failure - COCOON (2023)

The Wrocław-based group Give Up to Failure is one of the few bands I know that successfully combine post-punk and post-rock genres. Their music is dark in two different ways and it works very well together. Three years after their debuting release Burden, they are back with something very special on COCOON.

It's really easy to sense what it meant for the band to finish this release. They state that "This album is blood, tears and rain for us (...). This album was supposed to be the beginning, and it became the end of a certain stage" and so the lineup of the outfit is going to change right now so the album is already a snapshot of the history of Polish underground music. The uniqueness of the band comes from their flexible approach to music genres. While the music is set in the extremely dark and gloomy kind of post-rock heaviness, the vocals make it closer to, depending on the song or even fragment of a song, the coldness of post-punk or the warmth of dream pop. I especially like when the soft but emotional ones lead the audience into the tear-jerking, melancholic place that is made of synthy and guitar-heavy noise (as in Sleepwalk).

The hypnotic darkness gets even more seductive in the single track Slow Collapse where the listener is enchanted by the tribal-like magical chanting. But, in truth, the whole album is mesmerizing, from the livelier beginnings to the hazy, noisy with the guitar overload finish. 

COCOON costs 6.5 EUR (30 PLN).

Give Up to Failure - Burden (2020)

Check: Slow Collapse

Country: Poland

Genre: post-punk post-rock

Label: Requiem Records

:bandcamp:

:facebook:

:instagram:

:spotify:

Królówczana Smuga - Żałosne (2021)

Folk-oriented but very modern lo-fi industrial music from the East corners of Poland, this is Adam Piętak and his music project that got recognized thanks to 2020's ODRAPDORAP and now is being pushed further towards the weird and mesmerizing world of Piętak's uniqueness due to the new album called Żałosne ("Lamentable"). 

Unlikeon the previous release, there's very small amounts of vocals here. Perhaps the new brand outfit with the BDSM/folk-inspired mask (yes, it's possible!) makes it particularly difficult to sing or Piętak just decided to draw special attention to something else this time. But when they show, in Sitarenka ("A Sievemaker Girl"), they are still his signature asset: somewhat spoken, somewhat shouted out, a bit metal-like, very lo-fi and mixing the folk leitmotif with Weltschmerz-induced, super unnerving lyrics. And yes, the folk roots are strong as always - the whole album's theme revolves around sitarstwo, the art of creating sieves, apparently popular back in the day in Piętak's hometown of Biłgoraj. But, as always in folk music, this is only an excuse to introduce the real theme of the album, as the artist states it, "Żałosne is an album about parting/splitting-up and the grief that comes with it". No wonder that the main message I took from those tracks is "everything is horrible!".

Further into the album, it turns out to be purely instrumental. The tone clearly sounds like it was supposed to: it's a lament of a hurt soul. And Piętak does a really good job in creating this industrial, post-apocalyptic and very, very sad atmosphere while adding folk instruments into the mix. I have no clue about those, I can't describe or name what is being used here, but you can hardly come across such a combination, very often bordering ambient/drone confusing soundscapes, that's for sure.

Żałosne costs 3.5 EUR (15 PLN).

Królówczana Smuga - ODRAPDORAP (2020)

Check: Gorzki baź

Country: Poland

Genre: industrial folk

Label: Requiem Records

:bandcamp:

:facebook:

:instagram:

:youtube:

:spotify: