bartosz kruczyński: dreams & whispers

Balmat has always been careful not to call itself an ambient label. But with the 11th release, the label turns its ears -- proudly, blissfully -- to a strain of ambient at its most timeless. The appropriately titled Dreams & Whispers comes from Warsaw's Bartosz Kruczyński, who has recorded under a number of guises, Earth Trax, as well as his own name. Over the years, he's touched upon deep house, breakbeats, acid, techno, electro, IDM, and more; often, the throughline running through a given album is simply the refusal to remain in any one place for long -- well, that, and his unusually nuanced ear for harmony and texture. Those qualities come to the fore on Dreams & Whispers, which might be the most focused encapsulation of Kruczyński's atmospheric sensibilities to date. Across 14 stripped-down tracks for shimmer and pulse, Kruczyński evokes overlapping styles in ambient -- warm vibraphones, taut arps, massing strings, lonesome delay chains -- but always with his own twist. Fitting the album's title, the album is loosely divided into two distinct moods: The A-side, "Dreams," is charged with subtle movement, rhythms spreading out like rings around skipped stones, while the B-side, "Whispers," plunges into a zone of shadows and hush. The two complementary moods flow into one another like the faces of a Moebius strip, yielding an album that's intuitively shaped and rich in emotion. Balmat is a label with a cloudy outline. Jointly shepherded by Albert Salinas and Philip Sherburne, two friends living in Cardedeu, Catalonia, and on the Balearic island of Menorca, Balmat grew out of Lapsus Radio, a weekly show born almost ten years ago. Balmat's mission is simple: to foster new ideas, expand upon personal obsessions, and put enveloping sounds out into the world.