piotr kurek: edena

ltd repress. Released on tape by the Polish label Sangoplasmo, Edena is the amazing record by Poland's Piotr Kurek. As a composer and multi-instrumentalist with a penchant for vintage sound equipment, as well as the practical sense to know where their limitations are, his musical compositions -- part melodic narrative, part sound collage -- distill a sense of nostalgia into a romance for the present. Using a Moebius comic he had never seen (Le Monde d'Edena) and an instrument he would never have (a Mellotron) as a conceptual starting point, the Warsaw-based, Polish artist presents Edena. A hypnotic, circular motion pervades all of Edena; a cyclic life-force that gives the impression of forward motion, while really folding back on itself, reflected by the infinity symbol of the cassette cover. The record is full of warm analog synth sounds and strange voices, like Roberto Cacciapaglia's "6 Note in Logica," and shares connections with the minimalistic music and '60s experimentalism of Steve Reich, Philip Glass and the hyper-energetic electronic nirvana of Terry Riley's 1967 masterpiece A Rainbow in Curved Air.