Known for its genrebending and genre-blending approach, the group has always been known for reinventing itself and its musical language. Whether it was noisy and jazz-influenced neo-krautrock of Duch Tornada (Instant Classic, 2015) or polyrhythmic avant-prog of Eurodrome (Instant Classic, 2019), the results were always ingenious, surprising and defying the clichés of musical canons.
With their new project titled Spectra (Brutality Garden, 2022/2024) the band is fully committed to creative reinterpretation of traditional and modern African and Latin American rhythms that were already present to a smaller extent on their previous albums. ||ALA|MEDA||’s new face depends on highly syncopated rhythms performed by two drummers and bassist which function as a scaffolding for wild post-internet and deconstructed electronic collages. The band's new artistic direction is „spectral” in many respects: it creates a disjunctive continuum of various musical tropes, incorporating such disparate elements as gqom, free jazz, UK bass, krautrock, IDM, post-industrial, batida into one differential whole.
The effect is a unique tropical-industrial combination where avant-garde meets afro-house and complex sampling and granular synthesis are fully integrated into frenetic live rhythm section. The main idea of the band’s new direction is a total fusion of electronics and live music and obliteration of all divisions between high and low arts, sublime and vulgar works ,avant-garde and entertainment, music „for the soul” and music „for the body”. However, this is not a postmodern feast for tired spirits, nor a nostalgic longing for a long-lost unity with nature, but a new realism in an ever-shifting world.
||ALA|MEDA|| is well-known for powerful and euphoric concerts which resulted ininvitations to such festivals as Unsound Festival in Cracow, Positive Futures Festival in Innsbruck, Wine Nat White Heat Festival in Nantes and Paris, Jaiyede Jazz Festival in Odense, Sharpe Festival in Bratislava, Avant Art Festival in Warsaw and Wroclaw, Katowice JazzArt Festival and many more.
The group consists of five experienced Polish musicians representing different generations of musical innovators: Jacek Buhl (Jachna/Mazurkiewicz/Buhl, Trytony), Rafał Iwański (HATI, Innercity Ensemble), Łukasz Jędrzejczak (T’ien Lai, Javva), Piotr Michalski (3moonboys) and Jakub Ziołek (Stara Rzeka, Zimpel/Ziołek).
Video:
"rumor" from the album "Spectra. Vol.1", 2022: https://youtu.be/pB7nx406_X8
live in Punctum, Praha (Czech Rep.), 2022: https://vimeo.com/784257454