Ballads & Blues finds guitarist Patryk Zakrocki, bassist Maciej Garbowski and percussionist Krzysztof Gradziuk in a studio in Warsaw performing two discs worth of material. There is no live audience, no extra takes from days later. I imagine there were some predetermined structures or motifs, maybe even a few threadbare compositions, but only a few and they must have been quite open. Although Zakrocki's guitar runs through delays and four distinct amplifiers, the scenario and instrumentation are pretty straightforward: a guitar-led trio in a studio aiming to capture the "spirit of blues" in real time. The music they produce, however, is hardly as conventional as any of that makes it sound.
A couple qualifiers. Ballads & Blues is not a take on the blues, or a reinterpretation of it. It eschews most stylistic elements often associated with the genre, until the last three cuts (Blues XV, XVI, XVII) on the second disc. Because of that, these tracks provide a closure of their own, an assemblage of the elements in the excursions that precede them, and something more recognizable as a deconstruction of its primary stylistic inspiration. Even here, however, the twelve bar blocks, the repetition, the drive to resolution are all missing. At times Zakrocki plays a few strings of notes, whose melodies might fit into a more classic song structure. These are the exceptions. The real link with anything recognizably blues or balladic is the pervasive mood of solitude and melancholy, and maybe the baseline idea of fumbling through sounds, structures and combinations in order to make new sense out of a problem.
On Ballads & Blues, the problems are less concrete, or at least concretely expressed, than those Charlie Patton, Robert Johnson, Skip James, and their ilk were concerned with. However, especially leaning back on those early recordings, or the countless "field recordings" of Black ensembles especially throughout the South in the early days of wax records, one might view this album as a modern take on early blues environments, smeared recordings in the open air or on the porch or in the bar where the ambient sounds enveloped the balladeer.
Zakrocki, Garbowski and Gradziuk are clearly steeped in modern experimental music. That much comes through in their technique and their ability to improvise without vamping, melody, steady rhythm and other tactics conventionally employed. This recording is more about feeling and sounds (especially Gradziuk's creative use of various clings, clangs, rattles, and various other objects) than song. Such a statement may sound anathema to the project's aims. Blues is based on song, on beginnings and endings and directional progress. I would nevertheless argue that these three musicians are really onto something bluesy in some ethereal but fundamental sense. And, even if I am wrong about that, this album is really a wonderful and curious listen.
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