Just over a year after Skalpel first emerged on Ninja
Tune, they return with another fine collection of old
school jazz and breaks. Formed in Wroclaw, South Poland,
by Marcin Cichy and Igor Pudlo at the end of the nineties,
the pair developed a particular blend of grooves using
long-forgotten Eastern European jazz recordings from
the sixties and seventies as raw material. The pair
was spotted by DJ Vadim during a tour, and promptly
summed up to join forces with Ninja Tune. A handful
of EPs and a first eponymous
album followed in 2003 and 2004 respectively.
Konfusion appears instantly darker and seedier
than its predecessor. The beats have been dipped into
heavy concoctions of late night fumes and sleaze, the
grooves have become thicker and stickier, impacting
on the general mood of the record. This is the flip
side of the band’s debut, when clubs become crowded
with gangsters and whores instead of the young and beautiful.
And while the elements forming the core of the ten compositions
presented here remain pretty straightforward and unadventurous,
the process applied by Cichy and Pudlo gives this album
its consistence and body.
The album opens with Shivers and Flying
Officer, which offer an interesting transition
between the band’s sociable debut and the darker
moods of this sophomore effort. The atmosphere is not
yet too confined and sombre. The rhythmic section of
the former and moody bass on the latter are balanced
with airy lines of sax scattered all over. The ambience
turns a sourer shade with Long Distance Call,
and never recovers. The orchestration is stripped down
to only allow comatose rhythm sections and occasional
eruptions of piano, trumpet or sax. As the album progresses,
the atmosphere becomes heavier, Cichy and Pudlo gradually
reinforcing their stance. Konfusion is not
assembled simply to entertain. The pair want to mark
their audience. Comparisons appear all too futile and
deny the music its right to exist. Of course what’s
on offer here is neither original nor visionary, yet
there is something about the work of Skalpel that gives
the music a truly unique relief. Perhaps it is this
understanding of oppression resulting from the bleak
history of Poland during the second half of the twentieth
century that allow Skalpel to layer dirt and stand the
pressure of this particular environment. If Konfusion
is not a real departure from the band’s debut,
it nevertheless builds on the fluid structures of its
original scope and shows the band developing with great
confidence.
3.8/5 |
