Jerzy Mączyński – DO 555PS

Vibrasjon

Polish saxophonist and sound designer Jerzy Mączyński is making quite a name for himself in post-jazz circles having collaborated fairly recently with Wacław Zimpel and Hieroglyphic Being.

DO 555PS is his first solo outing, utilising ideas formulated with his Pelican System album, but pushing them further and attempting to create a suite of songs for an imagined world from saxes, samples and electronics, and what an impressive feat it is. Over ten tracks, real and imagined sounds roil and reverberate, generating an atmosphere that picks at the edges of reality, uncovering a universe hidden in the shadows; one for which we need to take a deep breath before entering.

The deep night-time tone of the sax on opener “Requiem For The Earth’s Nature” introduces us to Jerzy’s soundworld, an evocative late-night scene, abandoned and shadowy, the call of winged creatures circling in the updrafts. The sax tones tickle then glide, merging and rippling into the distance while in other places synthetic beats rumble like an underground railway. There is something inherently mysterious about the Walter Hill-like musings, the sinuous reeds entwining around the hypnotic beat which lend urgency to the unleashed curls of sound.

The variety of sounds and imagery is impressive, with an Eastern flute-like tone arriving from nowhere, enhanced by specks and glimmers of an unknown place. Techno beats, the soft squeal of something, the pervasive creep of distant thoughts, the deep breathing of a huge confined creature all hint at some fragmented industry, something which if brought into the light would be too much for us to understand; so it stays buried, waiting for a further opportunity.

I was reminded of Seefeel by some of synthetic semi-industrial beats, but there is something life-affirming in the entwined sax tendrils; they are part-ghost, part-corporeal but ever-straining, fighting for permanence and recognition. This sound feels as though it is generated by a horde of people; but somehow Jerzy is managing this all by himself, leaping from short militaristic machine-gun rhythms to cat-like stretches and frantic windstorms. It is all-consuming and you find yourself scanning the sounds, trying to work out where they fit in as superspeed train echoes override the diverse saxes and electronic scaffolding clangs.

As a soundtrack to some alien civilisation, DO 555PS works perfectly with the deep textures and distant heartbeats coming on like memories of familiar sound, gradually being subsumed by the new way, replacing piece by piece what you recognise as real. Adventurous and intriguing in equal measure yet aching with some sense of loss, DO 555PS is well worth investigation.

-Mr Olivetti-