Words by Art Jefferson
Photography by Bartosz Hołoszkiewicz
Jazz has been and continues to play an intricate part in today’s music culture. Whether cleverly being sampled by DJs and producers during Hip-Hop’s “golden years”, resurrected throughout the rare groove and acid jazz period of the UK or carefully twisted by acts in the broken beat and future jazz scene, the sound has served as a foundation to many of the modern grooves that resonate with audiences worldwide. Polish duo Skalpel, consisting of Marcin Cichy and Igor Pudlo, were among the top tier of nu jazz artists fostering a new wave of jazz to the masses while simultaneously reintroducing the 60s and 70s cool jazz sound of their home country.
Hailing from Wrocław, Marcin Cichy and Igor Pudlo formed Skalpel in 1998 through a mutual love of musical tastes and an admiration of one another’s production style. In 2000 Igor Pudlo interviewed DJ Vadim for Klan (a Hip-Hop publication based out of Poland), which ultimately led to the Ninja Tune artist inviting Skalpel to tour with him and the Russian Percussion band throughout Poland. After releasing their CD-R “Polish Jazz”, Cichy and Pudlo signed with Ninja Tune to release their critically acclaimed self-titled debut album in 2004. Riding high, the duo unleashed their second LP “Konfusion” in 2005, which was welcomed with praises by publications such as JazzTimes for their detailed production.
After taking a break to work on individual projects, Skalpel are back with a new EP titled “Simple” via Plug Audio, a hybrid of jazz rhythms incorporated with the sound of now. Maintaining their high end artistry of crafting moody and sophisticated head nodding rhythms, the duo are sounding better than ever, proudly continuing the legacy that was left by their Polish jazz forefathers.
Art Jefferson-I read that you both met in a record store. At that point were the both of you already producing music?
Marcin-Yes, I remember I was playing Igor some music I did with friends (who record currently for Delmark Records). I also had some experience with documentary soundtracks, TV adverts and experimental sounds for video art (one of them for example was released on DVD, “The Hidden Decade” which is a selection of works that are crucial to the history of Polish video art).
Igor-When we met in 1997 we were both fans of Hip-Hop, drum & bass, IDM and trip-hop, and we were both after our first attempts of beat making. I played a cassette to Marcin with some of my spooky beats I had made on my first PC during the Flood of the Millennium in Wroclaw in July 1997. Marcin liked them and invited me to his in-house studio and showed me his much more technically and musically advanced productions. We decided to join forces and started making music together. I was responsible for delivering samples and Marcin for programming drum beats and arrangements, which more or less remains the same till today.
Art Jefferson-When did you discover your love for Polish jazz? Was it a natural progression from you all DJing or were you already jazz lovers beforehand?
Marcin-Igor introduced me to it. When I met him I didn’t even have a turntable. All of the music I did was based on hardware synths. So for me the path started with playing piano then synths, and then turntables and DJing .
Igor-I become acquainted with Polish Jazz in the mid 80’s through a friend of mine who was a jazz fan and member of Polish Jazz Society Records Club. He had albums of Krzysztof Komeda, Michal Urbaniak and groups like Laboratorium, Extra Ball and some live recordings from festivals like Jazz Jamboree and Jazz nad Odrą. I liked some of them but at that time I was deep into punk, new wave and synth pop.
The 90’s were the golden era of electronic music and with Marcin we took part in that golden rush so we started to dig and find our bonanza of Polish Jazz records.
In other words, we found a unique source of samples and they became a base for our distinctive sound. My knowledge of Polish Jazz helped us in the beginning but during the next few years together we discovered lots of forgotten treasures – pure gold on vinyl.
Art Jefferson-There are so many great jazz cuts that came out of Poland including records by musicians such as Tomasz Stańko, Zbigniew Namyslowski and loads more. What are some of your top go-to Polish jazz records?
Marcin-Komeda’s “Astigmatic” is one of the best jazz records worldwide or Czeslaw Niemen, which is not strictly Polish jazz, for his great use of electronic in pop music.
Igor-My favourite Polish jazz records are Jerzy Milian Trio’s “Bazaar”, Novi “Bossa Nova”, Jan “Ptaszyn” Wróblewski’s “Sprzedawcy Glonów” and Czeslaw Bartkowski’s “Drums Dream”. Those albums sometime sounds like our music although they are not our main source of samples, but were very inspirational.
Art Jefferson-At the time when you released records like “Sculpture”, was there still a heavy appreciation for jazz among the general populous in Poland or was it similar to countries such as the US and UK where it was confined to pockets based on location?
Marcin-Yes. Polish jazz here was almost forgotten. Most of the records I bought back then cost me no more than 1 to 2 pounds. Now the price can be 100 times higher.
Igor-The general public forgot about it and we are sure that the success of our work helped to popularise it. But I must admit that I was aware that producers and DJ’s from Germany and the U.K. like Jazzanova and DJ Vadim, were interested in Polish records before us.
The finale of this story is, as I was told, was that during one of his visits in Wroclaw, Bonobo asked to be taken to a record store hoping that he could find albums with samples as good as on our productions.
Art Jefferson-In the past, many jazz musicians were quite the traditionalists and even frowned upon the way Hip-Hop producers were sampling the sound? How were you received by some of the older jazz musicians in Poland? Were they supportive of the direction that you were taking the sound at the time you released your first album?
Marcin-We felt as we do now, a kind of very friendly atmosphere. We have heard a lot of compliments and later we found a lot of old forgotten records that got reissued.
We know we were not the only ones, Hip-Hop producers somehow supported the jazz scene and together with groups like Niewinni Czarodzieje, OSTR, Fish and others, we managed to make the audience look back into the Polish forgotten culture again.
Igor-We didn’t speak about our music with our old school jazz artist but we saw Ursula Dudziak in the front row at our gig and we had a remix request from Michal Urbaniak. Ryszard Sielicki, the founder and main editor of Polish Jazz series, asked us for autographs on “Sculpture”…and it meant a lot to us.
We also received one of the most prestigious Polish cultural awards at Paszport Polityki.
Art Jefferson-After releasing “Konfusion”, you guys took a bit of break to work on individual projects. When did you decide to join forces again to work on new material?
Marcin-It’s hard to say, we planned to make our third record since “Konfusion” but at that time I felt our music would have been nothing more than just a ‘third record’. I was looking for some new ways of expressing myself in sounds at that time. Sometimes it is good to stop for a while and change perspective. We had the perfect know-how to make the ‘Skalpel sound’ but it was not enough, and maybe too easy to make it again. It was also too hard because of our expectations due to it.
Igor-We didn’t want to repeat the same formula for the third time. We needed some time to work on new ideas and new ways of producing separately. There was no particular reason why we started to work together on the new album, we just felt that we knew what and how we should do it.
Art Jefferson-You have the new EP “Simple” coming out on Plug Audio. What I love is the fact that while you have maintained elements of Polish jazz, there is still a modern twist that works for today. How tricky is it to produce jazz-based tracks that are fitting for the current times without it sounding forced?
Marcin-By making mistakes and experimenting, our new releases are very synthetic. In fact, we like the way that with modern technology, which drastically developed in the last 5 years, we were able to keep our Skalpel sound yet completely change the way we achieve it. Sometimes it’s really hard to make digital music sound groovy – it needs time.
Igor-The challenge was to be different and to upgrade our sound without losing our identity. Our music is now is a hybrid of programming virtual instruments and sampling.
Art Jefferson-Finally, “Simple” is the pre-cursor to your forthcoming LP. Have you started working on the new album, and if so, what can people expect in terms of sound?
Marcin-We finished “Transit” LP last year in July. We hope to release it just after the summer holidays.
Igor-Except the title track, which is taken from the album, the rest of the pieces were made after we finished the LP. We thought they were not good enough for the album but the final versions surprised us and we like them very much, but we still believe that the album is better. The EP has a more club-oriented sound while the main record is much more complex and sophisticated. The new album is a less sample based record then its predecessors. It’s balanced between sounding acoustic, organic and electronic. This is not a “Polish Jazz record”, it is our own idea and it sounds very European, international.
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http://skalpel.bandcamp.com/