Wojciech Bąkowski - Voyager (2021)

What an oddity? Bąkowski comes off like Poland’s answer to Tricky, with a hint of Lazslo Hortobagyi, in a gloomy, displaced blend of trip hop, R&B, illbient and sampledelic textures.

‘Voyager’ leads down mazy, stained, concrete ginnels from Bąkowski’s ‘Jazz Duo’ (2019) album for Dunno (Lutto Lento, Aldona Orłowska) with a wickedly time-out-of-joint style that bends a certain sort of smoked-out ‘90s air into 2021. It’s hard to avoid comparisons with Tricky, from the way his vocals are low in the mix, and countered by female voices, to the canny use of preset string synth tones and that unshakeable, clammy atmosphere that resonates between concrete towers of Poland, London and Bristol.