CISNIENIE

— First review of this album —

Cisnienie make a glorious, glorious noise. It's instrumental and LOUD. The atmosphere is mostly dark, but the main thing here is the energy. Sometimes it is as if there is natural disaster and buildings come crashing down all around you. Like many post rock bands they love crescendos, except that often they start them already at a high level and increase the intensity from there. OK, there are some calmer parts in their music, which is needed to make the listener feel the energy of the more energetic ones, but they (the calmer parts) are few and far between. The beginning is one of them, and they take some time to get off from there, which works quite well as an opener.

We have drums, bass, keyboards (mostly piano), saxophone and violin. There is a distorted electric guitar that takes centre stage in certain parts despite not being mentioned in the line-up above. So the sound is rough and down to earth, with much human dynamics; electronics have little impact here. It is, I have to say, in many places not exactly subtle, and some parts are build up from very simple motifs. Also there is a lot of repetition, but this is at least as much of a feature as it is a bug, and the natural dynamics between the musicians work well to make also the repetitive parts enjoyable. The second track Wszyscy zdechniemy (Bydlo) is the most sophisticated one composition-wise and has some free jazzy parts and a unique sound-driven atmospheric intro. Otherwise making a dark rhythmic noise is the order of the day. I gave their earlier brass album 5 stars and they were probably my best fairly recent discovery, and now my favourite Polish band. Their 2023 effort (released end December so probably can't compete for 2024 album of the year and didn't really for 2023) is maybe not quite up there, or has just less novelty factor for me, but anyway, I love it and you can hear how much fun they are having. Fat 4.3 stars.

— First review of this album —

This is a live album featuring a brass section of more than 20 members on top of the regular band members on drums, bass, violin, keyboards, and french horn, and they really blow the house down. The instrumentation makes for a quite original take on post rock crescendos. They have rarely been done with as much energy as here; fans of Sigur Ros, Godspeed You Black Emperor and Swans take note! Jaga Jazzist have tried out a somewhat similar thing before, but Cisnienie throw even more at it, with stunning effect. The major characteristics of this music are the high energy level of the storm they put together as the tracks go on, and the dark atmosphere. Some of the material reminds me of Univers Zero, and it should also appeal to fans of darker RIO music. They take good time for their ideas to develop, this is not for the impatient, but the build ups are rich enough to make the time fly. It's also a drummer's feast, Kacper Kowalczuk must feel to be in heaven with all the fireworks he can unleash here. The album features four tracks plus one "bonus" of 1:25 that is a somewhat messy but fun experimental ending and correctly marked as irregular. The opener W glowy at a little bit less than 9 minutes is the only track with vocals (apart from the bonus). It starts off slow and atmospheric, creating tension before getting things moving, raising to a mighty finale. The vocals are mostly spoken, Polish (I have no idea what this is about), and cool. This works very well and is a pretty quintessential track for what the album is about. Parowoz do Mordoru (does that actually mean Mordor? It wouldn't surprise me given the music) has some 6 minutes. It starts rhythmically and is all about powerful brass hits that are quite dynamic from the beginning but once more raise to an orgasmic finale. This one goes through on pretty much the same rhythm from beginning to end, whereas the other tracks show more variation. HOTRS (almost 10 minutes) throws in some noisy electronic sounds to add to the tension, and gives the listener a calm part after the first wave, before once more erupting into an all-encompassing sound explosion. Live this was probably even more impressive than at home, but anyway, this is what I got.

The album has been excellent already up to this point, but track 4 Same Trupy at 16 minutes is outright spectacular. It starts with a subtly composed calm introduction, then a marching rhythm kicks in and the brass troops start finding their formation, what a build up! They come together as a stream that takes everything with it, using some iconic chords that immediately established this track in my "inner ear". One could say that the tracks all follow more or less the same pattern, and that this pattern has been done before (we may go back to Ravel's Bolero), however I have a strong emotional reaction to this, and my impression is that this is unique anyway, and that post rock has really been waiting for being played like this. This is my first encounter with Cisnienie, so I can't relate it to their other albums. As it's called "Brass Album" I expect the others to have a somewhat different sound. I'll find out. This one is a jewel! 4.7 stars.