Stefan Węgłowski — PHASE_1_4

PHASE_1_4 utilizers sparse and spotting piano work, set in a backdrop of spectral production elements which take in low-key texturing, hazed field records, and other lo-key sonic elements. It’s a release where the foreground & background often shift places in a most dreamy, at points disorientating manner.

Stefan Węgłowski is a polish composer who has released four albums over the last few years. His output sit’s somewhere between minimalist contemporary composition, and spectral disquiet- to create quite a distinctive sonic place which is both haunted & sleek.
 
PHASE_1_4 features Polish pianist Adam Kośmieja, who lays out an extremely sparse map of key work, to which Węgłowski places his gentle hazed, to lightly spiralling, hovering and droning production around/ through.  The four-track piece was created between the years 2020 & 2021, and when you considered what was going on in the world during those two years- i.e. the Covid pandemic. The work very much recreates that feeling of disconnection & uneasy solitude we all felt during that time.
 
We move from the uneasily simmering field recording haze/ ambience meets spotting ‘n’ spaced keyboard notation of “PHASE_01”. Onto the more evenly chiming key starkness of “PHASE_03” which reverbs the piano slightly, as well as building a low-key selection of billows, crinkles, and light electro grains. With “PHASE_O4_EPILOGUE” finding an almost harmonic tipped swirling haze set around the slow, and lightly echoed selection of spaced key darts.

PHASE_1_4 very much blurs the boundaries between minimalist composition, and spectral ambient composition. With the forty-four-minute piece slowly but surely pulling you into its fragile, delicate, if subtle uneasy sound world..