Ola Bilińska - vocals
Maciej Cieślak - guitar
Szymon Tarkowski - bass
Hubert Zemler - drums
Babadag
LADO ABC B/18
By Adam Baruch
This is the debut album by Polish ensemble Babadag, a quartet fronted by vocalist/lyricist/composer Ola Bilińska with guitarist Maciej Cieślak, bassist Szymon Tarkowski and drummer Hubert Zemler. The quartet members play a plethora of instruments among themselves and a few guest musicians also appear on selected tracks. The album presents ten original songs, all written and composed by Bilinska, nine of which have lyrics in English and one in Polish.
The music is immediately
strikingly as highly original, and therefore difficult to be easily
categorized. The atmosphere is mostly somewhere in the neighborhood of
Progressive Folk-Rock, but with instrumental work that borders on the Avant
Progressive with touches of Jazzy influences. Although focused on Bilińska's
vocal explorations, this is obviously a team effort, as this highly emotional
and complex music involves close cooperation between the Artists than usually
found in such efforts.
Bilińska displays extraordinary
talent both as a composer of atmospheric, expressive and fully developed highly
original compositions and as a unique performer. Although she sings lyrics, her
delivery is more instrumental than text oriented and she uses a very diverse
palette of vocal approaches. I usually detest Polish vocalists singing in
English, but in this context the theatrical and artistic delivery of the vocals
hide the "improper" accent and pronunciation to such extent, that it
is completely acceptable.
The other musicians involved in
this project display their respective abilities as multi-instrumentalists,
playing many exotic and unusual sounds, always perfectly matching the music. The
arrangements of the material are credited to the entire ensemble, and rightly
so, as this is obviously a result of close cooperation and common goal, as already
mentioned above.
As far as I know this album
received very little exposure so far, which is not surprising considering how
original, different and artistic it is. Perhaps the fact that it floats
somewhere between the straightforward genre definitions has something to do
with it. Also the fact that it was released on a small independent Polish label,
Lado ABC, associated with the Polish avant garde scene, did not help to gain
popularity. Nevertheless the album definitely does deserve exposure, as it is a
solid piece of heartwarming music, searching, exploring and aesthetically pleasing,
not to mention being a superb debut effort.
