TOMASZ BEDNARCZYK – Summer Feelings CD – Room 40

Fresh from the ROOM 40 stable comes a fine new release from Tomasz Bednarczyk, a subtle and fragile take on piano intervention that sets the bar a little higher for ambient artists the world over.

The piano has undergone a massive resurgence of interest from the digital/minimal community, revitalised in part by the likes of Kenneth Kirschner, and Nicolai and Sakamoto. A host of artists great and good, have used the instrument in its purest form, utilising its resonances and residuals to shore up a digital backdrop, creating lush and exquisite ambience, others deploy the more radical and extreme stuttering and splicing exemplified by Nicolai on the fabulous “Insen” release a couple of years back.

Bednarczyk’s particular brand of ambience uses short piano tracts underpinned with field recordings, and digital frippery to form parchment-delicate scrolls of warmth, tempered with skips and cracks, angular and precise formations that compliment the richness of the piano, and elevate it to higher realms. There are essentially seven pastoral pieces, basking in warmth and light, soft pastel sketches that glisten and shimmer, drenched in reverb and glowing ambience. “Adeline Yen Mah” is a dreamy piece, almost exclusively piano, subtly threaded with radio static, or perhaps an old record left to run on silently. “I see you” is cut from the same cloth as Biosphere’s “Substrata”, filtering a calm, insistent two-tone piano refrain into a pale digital background. Closing track, End of the Summer, is a more experimental take, and as a bonus track, perhaps informs us of things to come..a shifitng and skippy piece that seems disjointed and unsettled when placed next to its predecessors, it reminds me of The Boats, except the piano tones are washed out by amorphous treaments, leaving us with pure digital skrim. Overall, an engaging and enticing release from a promising young artist, working magic from an economy of means. BGN