Piętnastka - Dalia (2011)

Piętnastka to projekt Piotra Kurka, „zrodzony z miłości do rzeczy starych i tajemniczych”. To jedno z najciekawszych zjawisk, jakie pojawiły się na scenie kasetowej. Kaseta „Dalia”, wydana w 2011 przez Sangoplasmo, zawiera psychodeliczne, senne soundscape'y, pulsujące podskórnym napięciem pod warstwami nostalgicznych, baśniowych miraży. W muzyce Piętnastki wpływy minimal music i zelektryzowanego folku łączą się, budując osobliwie lokalną odmianę hauntologii. (unsound)

The first release for Polish composer Piotr Kurek under the Piętnastka moniker, Dalia is a cassette jam-packed with disarmingly simple synth melodies and liquescent intrigue. Kurek will be familiar to Digitalis fans through his Heat release from last year, but whereas that tape zoned out in a psychedelic haze of cosmic wooze, Dalia is an altogether more playful affair. The short pieces on offer here are like miniature soundtracks to a child-goes-adventuring movie but never come across as childish. Despite their apparent simplicity, there are dark undertones to a lot of these vignettes that bring to mind the more foreboding fairy tales — Hansel and Gretel maybe, but especially The Pied Piper in which a man leads first rats and then children to their deaths by having them dance to his tune. There’s an almost hypnotic quality to Piętnastka’s music that is evocative of the effect a pipe supposedly had on the rats and children and when each track nears an end and layers itself up to a frenetic finale the feeling of having reached some kind of perilous nadir without ever having recognised it was possible becomes suddenly, spookily apparent. ‘Czterdzieoci Cztery’, for example, has a repetitive computer game refrain which seems to simultaneously calm and coax the listener and ‘Noakowski’ takes its plods along like a digitised version of Edvard Grieg’s ‘In The Hall Of The Mountain King’, a piece of music I’ve always found eerily stirring despite having never seen Peer Gynt and its cast of trolls and goblins. Kurek’s song is most likely named for the artist Stanisław Noakowski, who painted his fair share of imposing houses on hills that cry out for a Tin Tin to go and explore. The tone of the cassette is something akin to what you’d expect from a Ghost Box release in the way they use musty kitsch to invoke uncomfortable feelings of nostalgia but Kurek, for my money, is far more successful and he makes it seem effortless. Dalia is a dangerously enchanting piece of work. (foxydigitalis)