Subvillage Sound

There is a small but lively electro-folk scene in Poland, which was kick-started by the Warsaw Village Band. Village Kollektiv, part of that scene, seems more like a workshop than a band and this album is more like a sampler of different experiments, combining live and electronic music, than an organic work.

A couple of members of the Warsaw Village Band are involved – Sylwia Swiatkowska on fiddle and Magda Sobczak on cimbalom – with other musicians working in a similar spirit, notably Bart Palyga playing a whole variety of instruments as well as throat singing. The repertoire is drawn from Polish, Gypsy, Bulgarian and other sources. Different listeners will love or hate different things here. I prefer tracks such as ‘Molih Ta’, which exploits the cimbalom in a distinctly modern dance-scape or ‘Uado’, a gentle Polish song coloured with gadulka fiddle. Others, like ‘Topola’ and ‘Romani Chaj’ seem aggressively industrial. But experiments like these will mean that whatever comes next from the musicians of this outfit is likely to be more finely polished.