Having released their eponymous debut album in 2005, avant-garde Polish rock group Oranżada celebrate the passing of two decades in the best possible style, namely with a new long player. The preceding twenty years have found the band teasing our eardrums with deeply emotional music that veers towards the experimental, and they’ve left behind a tantalising trail of releases which leads us to their latest album, Salto. Featuring seven diverse tracks that are unified by their own eclecticism, Salto should spread the band’s sound far and wide.
The first thing that hits you about opening track ‘Początek wszystkiego’ is its cinematic quality; it plants strong images in the mind’s eye and digs roots deep into your psyche. It would make the perfect accompaniment to some uber-cool film (think Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s Pociąg) and immediately sets a dark tone for the rest of the record. Layers of sound are added, almost imperceptibly, and rather like stepping in quicksand, before you realise you are totally subsumed in the band’s strange world. It’s an eerie way for the band to make an introduction, but one which signposts the rest of the record; it’s a dark brand of psychedelia in which the band deal and emanates as if from an otherworldly dimension. It is as if Oranżada are channelling the spirits of Miles Davis and Ray Manzarek and the resulting soundscape is the perfect amalgamation of the two.
This is a largely instrumental sound and it speaks in a way that mere words never could, and when the vocals do appear (such as on ‘Ldź do chmury’) then they are used like an instrument, a saxophone or flute, and entwine the music as such. It’s a dark canvas onto which the band paint their sound and they attack it with bold strokes and razor sharp riffs that tear through the very fabric of time. Aided by a clear, crystalline production that separates all the players, a feeling of something so vast and expansive is created that it can barely be comprehended, it dwarfs the listener and makes you feel insignificant in its shadow. It means that Salto is the type of album that will reward repeat plays as subtle nuances hidden deep in the mix bubble to the surface and reveal themselves on successive spins.
The great thing about Oranżada is that they sound like no one but themselves. Sure, you can hear elements of their influences, such as a Hawkwind vibe on ‘Powolny rozwój, ale nagły rozkwit’, but it’s used as a springboard towards something new rather than any nefarious copycatting. Salto is an unorthodox listen and one that continues to throw curveballs throughout the whole album, and the only caveat is that you should always expect the unexpected and it means that the conclusion of final track ‘O.P.S.I.W.M.R.’ poses as many questions as it answers (which is exactly how it should be), but one thing’s for certain, with Oranżada on the scene, the future’s bound to be interesting.
- Salto is released via Audio Cave and is available now.
- Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube Channel
Track List:
- Początek wszystkiego
- Ostatnie poprawki galaktycznego krawca
- Narodziny planety
- Powolny rozwój, ale nagły rozkwit
- Ldź do chmury
- Nie wszystko oczywiste
- O.P.S.I.W.W.R. (Odwieczne poszukiwanie sensu istnienia wg malarza Rzempka)
