In the subterranean spaces of the subconscious, there is a specific, flickering visual static that occurs when the physical world is shuttered away. Szymon Wójcik’s latest offering, titled with the evocative directive ‘when you rub your eyes, you see things you can’t describe,’ occupies this exact sensory boundary. It is an album that thrives on the emergence of consonance from a thick, harmonic vapor, utilizing just intonation and dense electronic textures to create a landscape that feels perpetually on the verge of vanishing. Wójcik has constructed a sonic world that possesses the strange transparency of a full glass that somehow refuses to spill, no matter how much weight is added to the vessel.
The experience is introduced through a brief, fragile “intro,” where the voice of Sara Flindt acts as the primary light source in an otherwise misty environment. Supported by the understated percussion of Jan Philipp and Wójcik’s own guitar work, this opening serves as a calibration for the listener’s ears. It prepares one for the arrival of “angel song,” a piece where the architecture of the sound expands into the cavernous resonance of a pipe organ and the formidable oscillators of the ARP 2500. Here, the woodwind and brass contributions of Victor Fox on tenor saxophone and Philipp Hayduk on trombone provide a structural counterbalance to the drifting, gaseous synthesizers. The result is a piece of sacred music for a secular age, a hymn that refuses to settle into a fixed form.
As the record breathes forward into “bless,” the ensemble grows in complexity, yet the music retains its porous, open-hearted quality. Amalie Dahl on alto saxophone and Lorenzo Colocci on bass flute weave melodic lines that feel less like composed themes and more like spontaneous biological growths. The presence of Oskar Tomala on prepared clarinet and Rafał Różalski on double bass adds a tactile, earthy grit to the ethereal electronics. Flindt’s lyrics and vocal parts, which she composed herself, do not merely sit atop these arrangements; they are embedded within them, revealing that the harmonies were elusive from their very inception.
The conceptual peak of the album is reached during “it’s only begun.” This track breaks through the accumulated haze to reveal a crystalline, wide-angle perspective. The addition of Ferdinand Schwarz on trumpet, Rasmus Svale Kjærgård Lund on tuba, with Emily Wittbrodt on cello creates a formidable wall of sound that nonetheless feels light enough to float. It is a moment of profound openness, a spiritual realization that the indescribable is not something distant, but something immanent in the very fabric of our perception. The movement from the dense mist of the earlier tracks into this sharp, vibrant clarity suggests a transition from seeking to seeing.
The record concludes with “chords,” a title that belies its quiet power. Having traversed the depths of the ARP 2500’s synthesis and the complexities of large-ensemble improvisation, Wójcik returns to a fundamental simplicity. Performed by a quintet of saxophone, trumpet, flute, tuba, and cello, the piece strips away the electronic artifice to leave behind a series of pure, illusory movements. These final sounds are the auditory equivalent of the spots of light that dance behind closed eyelids, fleeting, impossible to hold, yet undeniably real. Wójcik and his collaborators have created a work that honors the mystery of the unseen, proving that the most profound gifts of music are often the ones that elude our ability to name them.
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