Decoder Magazine

This week I reviewed Nouveaux Gymnastes, the debut collaboration from Polish composer Piotr Kurek, aka Pietnastka, and French drone musician Mika Perez, aka Sylvia Monnier. In the process of writing my review, I came across Kurek's earlier release, Dalia, released on the same enterprising Polish experimental label that handled the collaboration: Sangoplasmo Records. Since Dalia had sold out of its original cassette pressing, Kurek and Sangoplasmo both consented to having the album available here at the Free Music Archive. I called the thing "a sprawling and epic synthesis of experimental composition with the traditional melodies of eastern Europe", which - God willing - will read as an enthusiastic recommendation.

We knew we had to upload this after reading: "Ricamatrici takes its inspiration from industrialized garment production". The album takes as its heroines "seamstresses, women who spend their lives sewing in factories and basements – leaving their dreams and aspirations behind". The sounds of ?alos bear that inspiration out in myriad aural flourishes and patterns of textured home-recordings throughout Ricamatrici. Pan y Rosas Discos writes further of the composition, "sewing machine as sound creation. Electronics. Blindfolded piano played by instinct, touch, feeling, listening. Gull songs and small fragments of sound narration – alarm clock, pen, snippets of piano denote times and places – advance the narrative, the journey of a seamstress. Arrival in the city via train. Hopes and dreams to be crushed. Departure and a new start in a new town." Though the finality with which we're told this poor seamstress is going to fail may make that narrative a little more difficult to sync up with, the effort is hugely rewarding.