Picture yourself walking along the sandy shores of a remote island, greeting the jellyfish hiding in the tide pools, then moving on—already on the streets of London—we find ourselves at a Mass in Congo. Łukasz Poleszak’s newly debuted album Roots is just as trippy, unusual and meditative: gathering together the sounds of nature, it creates a feeling as if we were listening to Mother Nature whispering in our ears. The tracks take us on a wonderful journey—that everyone can feel a little bit like their own.
Łukasz is a Polish music producer and composer of electronic, film and theatre music, known mainly as Wudec, who has released several albums as an event and festival organizer and a promoter of the underground club scene and rave culture, but this is the first time that he has released music under his own name. And for a good reason: the new album documents not only his wanderings on the physical plane but also a six-year journey through his inner world, accompanied by the sounds of nature.
“When I started working on this album, my life revolved around clubs, festivals and late-night gigs. I was a bit tired of writing music for the dancefloor and dreamed of freeing myself from that bubble and recording something that was completely in tune with my inner world.”
This freedom is exactly why Łukasz gave himself unlimited time to write the album, so he didn’t regret that the work took so long. Through the years, many inspirations and new loves have guided the project, such as cinema, analog soundscapes and nature, the latter of which first made a deep impression on the artist on the white cliffs of Dover.
“I realized that I was most attracted by the sounds of nature. The mountains, the jungle and the sea, became my number one target, and I have found the peace and focus I had been looking for. Recording sound maps that sometimes lasted for hours, I felt truly present: my mind, body and all my senses became one with my environment.”
Beyond the studio in Poland, the sounds and recordings featured on the album were recorded in London, Dover, Barcelona, Krakow, Silesia and Zanzibar. Among the album’s tracks appears a recording of a cassette tape that was found in London and echoed a holy mass in Congo and prayers by a Tibetan rinpoche. The field recordings revealed a limitless source of sound for Łukasz: among the organic textured rumbles, we can hear recordings made with a hydrophone, which he used to pick up the sound waves of tiny marine creatures waiting for the next high tide. And the most beautiful thing about these seemingly alien, mysterious sounds is that they actually came from an arm’s reach.
The photos in the jungle were taken by Alicja Lilianna Szpila.
Łukasz Poleszak | Weboldal | Soundcloud
Favorite interiors of the week_83
Büfé #10—Cold cuts, meat products
