Since it was officially confirmed that the world will end in flames comes December, a lot of bands have been scrambling to put out press releases on their last albums. Makes sense. I mean, what musician hasn’t long dreamed of their creations soundtracking our planet’s slow descent into cacophony and darkness? The latest entrant into this stream of end-times announcements is Poland’s Stara Rzeka. The project’s second and final album is called Zamknęły się oczy ziemi, and it will be out October 23 on Instant Classic. It’ll arrive as a two-disc box with a vinyl edition to follow later this year. Before we are all burnt to our various crisps, of course.
Largely a solo project of Kuba Ziolek, Stara Rzeka entered our consciousnesses long before we became aware of the horrible fate of our small pale blue dot, all the way back in 2013 with the excellent Cień Chmury Nad Ukrytym Polem (it was so good in fact that certain music websites put it on their year-end lists). According to a post on Instant Classic’s Facebook, the sounds found on Zamknęły się oczy ziemi won’t be too far removed from Cień Chmury Nad Ukrytym Polem, pulling in an assortment of “sadness, long sounds, glitches and distortions” and tying them together with references to motives by the likes of Albert Ayler, Pharoah Sanders, and Moondog. The pieces making up the album were collected over the last two years, as Ziolek worked with numerous other groups, including the Alameda Trio, Innercity Ensemble, and Kapital.
Now, before I let you go and grab your go bag and draw your loved ones near, that whole thing up top about the world ending was actually just a complicated ruse. The world isn’t really ending! Ha! This is the last Stara Rzeka album, though. Mostly just because Ziolek has decided to focus a bit more on his other projects. He’s not even planning to stop performing under the name — that is, at least until he comes up with another name. And, of course, the world still could end at any time, so who knows, maybe I wasn’t pulling your leg up top after all.
Zamknęły się oczy ziemi tracklist:
01. Nie zbliżaj się do ognia
02. W sierpniową noc
03. Małe świerki
04. Czarna woda
05. BHMTH (czyli historia z wujkiem Albertem)
06. Melodia
07. Stara Rzeka
08. Mapa
09. Ogniste kazania B.B.
10. W szopie gdzie były oczy
11. Mitylena
• Stara Rzeka: https://stararzeka.bandcamp.com
• Instant Classic: http://instant-classic.com
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