GAŁGAŁ — Ich schwöre ich hab Angst

[Abstand — 2023]★★★★★

Reviewed 21 August 2023by Colin Lang

My guess is that someone who runs a label for experimentalism and improvisation has a pretty keen sense of what constitutes a bad choice, musically speaking, anyway. Enter GAŁGAŁ, the alias of Abstand label co-founder, Michał Krajczok, who crafted his first album of electronic improvisatory music by throwing all of this learnedness out the window. Admittedly inspired by the twin attractors of John Cage’s nothingness on one side and infinite failure on the other, the results on Ich schwöre ich hab Angst (I swear I”m scared) are anything but nothing. Instead, Krajczok opts for a horror vacui of sorts, filling nearly every passing second with bleats and arrhythmically layered sounds. It’s kind of like the electronica version of Accelerationism – go faster than any system of signification could ever hope to catch up with. This means that although superficial, textural similarities abound with Autechre and other glitchy bricoleurs, there is no decorum when it comes to putting it all together. It is the medium that is haunted, running on empty, devouring everything in its wake, more so than any sonic signature. We hear said medium more than any recognizable song structure precisely because the amalgam fails to deliver one. That is the rub.

For most stretches of Ich schwöre ich hab Angst, things are pretty unlistenable – chaotic, frenetic, often frustratingly so – engendering the feeling of waking up in someone else’s unconscious, as with the funhouse samples in “Pays.” All of this of course begs the question: Why do it? It might be a challenge to the ears, and Krajczok has certainly managed something rather unsettling, depending on the value you place on human consciousness. But is that as simple as it sounds? Ich schwöre ich hab Angst proceeds as only something with a mind of its own could, free from the burden of intentionality and choice or chance that plague most compositional plodding, whether improvised or not. Perhaps this is the real tribute to Cage’s legacy: let this stuff run wild on its own and be there to pick up the pieces, like cards falling from a table, in this case, more likely a wavetable.

A difficult but ultimately rewarding work of collagist, electronic improvisation for fans of glitch, granular synthesis, and instrument-centric consciousness. Recommended!, To find out more

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