Włodek Gulgowski - Beyond Infinity (2020)

Włodek Gulgowski

Włodek Gulgowski - keyboards

Beyond Infinity

SOLITON 689






By Adam Baruch

This is an album by veteran Polish (resident in Sweden) keyboardist/composer Włodek Gulgowski closely linked to the early Polish Jazz scene, starting in Traditional Jazz and moving into modern Jazz in the 1960s and later on into Fusion in 1970s. Since then Gulgowski was involved as composer, arranger and player in many diverse activities ranging between Pop to Classical Music, cinematic music, New Age and others. This album offers music composed and performed by him using acoustic piano and multi-tracked synthesizers and drum machines, presenting ten tracks, three of which are mini-suite like triptychs, four are grouped into a collection and three are stand-alone pieces.

The music is pretty difficult to categorize, as it flirts with many diverse music genres, often performing chameleonic transformations within one piece. There are clear traces of Jazz, as expected, but also a distinct Classical Music palette, mixed with New Age hyper-melodic repetitions, Symphonic Progressive Rock reminiscences, atmospheric Ambient vistas and finally Latin World-Music accents.

Gulgowski is undoubtedly a very talented musician and composer, but listening to this music brings up immediately a feeling of "too much, too late". Yes it is all very pretty and it sounds great, but on the other hand it is sort of déjà vu altogether. Having said that, many listeners will absolutely love this music, as it is absolutely lovable. Overall this is a superbly and cleverly crafted piece of music, which will make many listeners on the lighter side of Jazz perfectly happy. And there is nothing wrong with this of course.