Pain/tings

The opener is an abstract melange of civilisation noises. This sombre introduction kind of reminded me of newer Depeche Mode music, so I put my ear nearer to the speaker - the next DM-association was the title of the CD itself, Pain/tings: Are we dealing here with "pain and suffering in various tempos", as it said on Playing The Angel by Martin Gore & Co.? This intro is already four minutes long, in just a second there might appear a warmer note, a familiar harmony... And still we are drifting forwards in complete darkness. Przemysław Rudź scores here big points, in my opinion - this is really a fascinating opening theme.
And there it goes, at about the 5. minute mark, a majestic chord a'la Klaus Schulze's winter landscapes! This icy impression is still quite murky and sombre, but now it is rather a Berlin "pre-ambient" impression than an abstract click-ambient sculpture. Rudź keeps on painting his sombre icy mirages almost 25 minutes long - this moving piece of music is a reminder of the electronic past and a "brave new sequence" at the same time.
The second track has a similar atmosphere from the very beginning; however, here the ice surfaces seem to begin to break down, so that one can see the dim outlines of the composition to a greater extent than in the case of the former track. Still, the music lurks in shades of lead-grey clouds passing over the sad skies. At about the 5' mark one could almost see the first signs of azure blue presence, nevertheless the dangerous metallic wind is howling every now and then somewhere near the listener. Until the very end of the track there will be no beats nor sequences at all, but there still will be yet even more room to fit in...
Track three is an interlude of a kind; Rudź sketches here a quite outlined melody, but still there is no sun at all to be seen - a polished ice button, at the very most... The amazing composition #4 is bathed in black liquid tones as if there suddenly was sound to the darkest pain/tings by El Greco. It's the most rhythmic movement so far, but, needless to say, the pace is quite slow and the rhythm patterns are tracked-down, thoughtful, introvert. What a wonderful mood - reminds me a lot of Wolfram Spyra's Hush Hour!
The fifth impression is yet another short interlude; on the one hand we have pretty liquid chord structures here, and there is at long last a ray of sunlight to be seen, on the other hand the drops of abstract sequential line are freezing instantly and lead our attention away from the more optimistic voices...
The final track with its 17 minutes is a moving electronic dream, with subtle solos in the old style once in a while... but in general there is once more a great amount of darkness and abstract iciness to it. Then something unexpected happens. At about the tenth-minute mark there appears a quick-paced sequence, and all the icebergs burst at last with loud thugs and crashes. With the 12. minute the drums join in, and then a whole bunch of Tangerine Dream-like colours explodes and lights up the white horizon with a liquid red afterglow. That's what I call a powerful coda of a moving record! And 75 minutes have already passed? Good to have this CD at one's disposal, so that one can explore the regions Klaus Schulze told us about in 1977 over and over, which I highly recommend.

Igor Wróblewski