Marcin Bożek / Danny Kamins - "Ignorantka"

Marcin Bożek / Danny Kamins

Marcin Bożek – Electric Bass 

Danny Kamins – Sopranino Saxophone

Album's title: "Ignorantka"

Musical Eschatology (2025)

Album's link: https://marcinbozekdannykamins.bandcamp.com/album/ignorantka

Video: https://youtu.be/lYLOFf4CD3E

Review author: Viačeslavas Gliožeris

As for many teenagers of the late 70s, rock music was an extremely important element of my reality. Every new album of Black Sabbath or Deep Purple was a bigger-than-life event in our then-world. It's funny, I still remember many of the popular album covers from that time ( and hardly remember the details of many much more significant events from my life when I was 25 or 35 years old young man). One thing I recall pretty well from my teenage rock rebellion period is “LISTEN LOUD!” stickers on many of the heavy rock albums we then adored. The realization of this recommendation wasn't usually an easy deal, and never made our parents (and neighbours) happy.

Somehow I remembered all these stories from half a century ago right from the very first sounds of “Ignorantka” - an album of free improvisations, recorded by Polish-American duo of bassist Marcin Bożek and sax player Danny Kamins. Probably, it's Marcin Bożek's electric bass sound that is responsible for such a feeling. Fortunately, the level of my independence increased since the time when the grass was greener, so I instantly turned the volume knob more right than usual nowadays.

Recorded during the duo's July '24 Polish 8-gigs tour, the album's music is dark, quite dry, and cold. The title “Ignorantka” (“Ignorant Female”?) tells not much – it's simply a name of the venue in Łódź where the music has been recorded. The dark grey/black cover and Jarosław Łukaszewicz's liner notes (in Polish) give a better idea. The listener is preparing to experience the sound of the death and rebirth of the sky bodies, to feel the emptiness of the black holes...

Four free improvisations, performed on electric bass and sopranino sax, build above the promised atmosphere quite successfully.

On the opener, “Slow Burn”, a bit lazy physical bass communicates with mathematically calculated sax licks, the way an astronaut steps on the unknown planet's surface. In progress, bass became even more groovy and sax licks – more nervous, almost hysterical. “The Need For The Unused” is faster; a lot of things happen there. Started as expanded sax free soloing over the vibrating bass line, the composition continues as a dialogue between the bass and sopranino, a cacophonous wave of sound, produced by both instruments playing against each other. The piece's ending is more spacey. The listener feels the emptiness of the dark Universe around us; the mechanical sounds partially filling it don't help to make it warmer.

“A Situation Of Wide Options”, the album's shortest track, is as emotionally cold as the other album's songs, just more nervous. The closer, “An Exhausted System,” is a twenty+ minute-long composition, summarizing the program's aesthetics. The listener feels the cold and emptiness of the space, the mechanistic power of processes that happen there, and, in some way, the eternity of the Universe.

With “Ignorantka”, Marcin Bożek and Danny Kamins step out to the unusual for free improvisers territory of space music, more characteristic for psychodelic rockers and electronics wizzards. With very different roots, the album's music sounds surprisingly close to these genres (aesthetically). For prepared listeners, it opens new horizons.

Just LISTEN TO IT LOUD!