Nihil “Polish morning raga”: Expect the unexpected (REVIEW)

The world that is inside your head Michał “Nihil” Kuźniak – leader of a black metal band Fury – has been an object of fascination for me for over a dozen years. He is a man who, in the black metal convention, can create a song referring to the riot, refer to Slavic deities and Polish folk beliefs, draw inspiration for the melody and rhythm from Polish folk music, and dress everything in an enigmatic, full of understatements labyrinth worth deciphering by an experienced linguist. Not to mention what he creates outside this convention. Because it is worth mentioning “W Śnialni” – an intriguing attempt to continue the narrative of Act III of Stanisław Wyspiański’s “The Wedding”.

If you were to place Nihil’s debut solo work somewhere, it would be next to the last of the mentioned projects. Even if the narration was taken over by the actors of the Stary Theater in Krakow, and “Polish morning raga” sounds directly from the host’s mouth. However, the approach is similar: we are dealing with fragments of words that never develop their full meaning before the listener. Any explanations about where we are, what situation the author puts us in and, of course, what it’s actually about, must only resonate in the listener’s mind. And you need to know that although Nihil is undoubtedly a poet with a prophetic background, he is very sparse with his words.

And only when I’m writing this, I realize that it’s no wonder that the main promotional element of the album is a quote from “The Last Deal” by Wiesław Myśliwski. And since each element of this quote is crucial to understanding the album, I am pasting it in its entirety: “Each is a kind of collection of fragments banging together, burned out like meteors, with nothing in common, extinguished hopes, dreams, desires, squandered feelings, lies masquerading as truths and truths masquerading as lies, and all this is unable to even revolve around a common axis.”

You can really hear it. In these dark ambient passages that suddenly turn into subtle pops on a bass guitar connected to an amplifier, in moments when we are dealing with a musical sketch, which, however, is never defined by Nihil. A perfect example is when the host recites “The sky is strewn with stars/And the floor is with crumbs of the abyss.” We know perfectly well that it could become a full-fledged piece, but suddenly the listener is permeated by chaos, distortions appear, a melody breaks through and quickly disappears – nothing is permanent here, because everything in the world is fleeting, and interpersonal bonds are fragile, so why should anything else be permanent? And Nihil’s “Polish morning raga” captures these feelings perfectly. The anxiety hanging over the whole thing, complemented by atonal sounds, only completes the atmosphere.

I don’t really know if I fully understand what the creator means, but I think I’ve already said this sentence in several titles in which Nihil was involved. What I do know is that I am constantly fascinated by how much a musician doesn’t pay attention to everything around him and just does his thing. So much so that the album was uploaded exclusively to Vimeo, from where it can also be downloaded in FLAC format from the description. If you have a lot of patience, you expect music to be an experience and you allow yourself for this experience to require something from you, not only from the creator, then I recommend it with a clear conscience. However, I strongly advise against others. And me? I will definitely come back and ponder over all the meanings that Nihil hid in his work.

Nihil, “Polish Raga Poranna”, ed. Studio Clean