New album - Etad Vai Tad - how did it happen, that is the things committed in 2019.
2019 was a very intense period for us. In February, we recorded the Haldur Bildur album, which was released in the autumn at Audio Cave. We played a dozen or so concerts in Poland and an autumn tour in Europe. We also met a brilliant artist – Marta Grzywacz. However, the most breakthrough moment in our work was the end of the year, that is the 30th of November and the 1st of December, to be precise. This is when I invited Marta Grzywacz and Piotr Damasiewicz – an outstanding trumpeter – to join us at the recording session. Somehow, they agreed so on the 30th of November I organized the recordings, and on the 1st of December we played the concert. The music created in the Concert Hall of the Szeligowski Music School in Lublin was registered by Lech Pukos, assisted by Tomasz Dziadczyk. The team also included photographer Tomasz Gawdzik and Rafał Kraśkiewicz who recorded the entire situation in form of a video.
New album - Etad Vai Tad - but what is it?
Initially, while planning the recordings, I came up with a lot of music that I wanted to play. Fortunately, and for various reasons, this did not happen. We took many steps toward completely unknown areas. We decided to let it go and not to focus too much on planning. That’s how we recorded a total of about 150 minutes of live music. It was both totally improvised stuff and a few grooves. I’ve never experienced such a progressive recording session before. Nice and casual atmosphere. Creativity. Full openness. Fantastic people. Dumplings and moonshine. That was it, and that’s what I want to do. We recorded the material in the following line-up: Marta Grzywacz – voice and piano, Piotr Damasiewicz – trumpet and piano, Tomasz Piątek – tenor saxophone, Grzegorz Lesiak – guitar and daxophone, Łukasz Downar – bass guitar and voice, Krzysztof Redas – drums.
New album - Etad Vai Tad - guests, guests:
Marta Grzywacz
I’ve heard Marta for the first time at the Codes festival in Lublin in May 2019 and I was immediately wondering how to invite her to cooperate. At the beginning, however, I couldn’t find her on the Internet, because, as it turned out later, she uses a different name for her artistic performances and a totally different one in other areas of her life. I searched, found, knocked and she opened. Turns out sometimes it is worth just going and knocking on that door. She turned out to be a very nice and open person. I’m glad she agreed to play with us. Marta has an amazing sense and her own musical world. She is extremely inspiring and creative in what she does. She has a vast knowledge, a potential and an incredible technique. She is the kind of people I want to meet. We played together for the first time in September. Three of the songs from this meeting were included in our album, The Third Ear Music, released by Audio Cave in December 2020. The next time we played together it was the session that now makes me feel sentimental. In general, Marta Grzywacz deals with improvisation in a very broad sense of this word. She works with her voice, piano and movement. She is a graduate and a lecturer at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music. In 2012, she won the title of Instant Composer and the second prize in the competition for improvising composers at the Transatlantyk festival. In 2015, as an improvising pianist and vocalist, she appeared on the album Case of Surprise by The Intuition Orchestra, released by the For Tune publishing house, which also revealed her poetic tendencies. In 2017, she co-created and performed Wojciech Błażejczyk’s audioscene composition, Unhinged, presented during the Audio Stage festival, making her debut in performance/ acting/ music area. As part of the Ad Libitum festival (2017), she performed with other invited musicians alongside double bass player Joelle Leandre. She has collaborated with many composers of contemporary, jazz, and free music. Marta is also active in Hashtag Ensemble.
New album - Etad Vai Tad - guests, guests:
Piotr Damasiewicz
Recently, in the eyes of Polish jazz experts, Damasiewicz is the most applauded artist, musician, visionary, publisher, and eternal pilgrim. From the moment I’ve heard Power of the Horns I am a fan of both his sound and all his philosophy of creating music. This album crushed me to the ground the first time I heard it. I have invited Damasio several times, because he turned out to be an extremely open artist and a nice guy. One could talk about his achievements for hours as he is on the road all the time and constantly creates something new, goes somewhere and plays with someone. I just hope that someday someone will put it together and publish it, because it’s a big deal. I invited Piotrek for the first time in 2018, when I was organizing the Music of the Third Ear together with the French trio TOC. We then played an impro set on grooves to some weird lyrics that were basically calls of Enochian magic. One of the tracks from this meeting was released on The Third Ear Music album. Since then, we have made several projects together. 2019 was quite a special year for Piotrek, as he came to play with us straight from his six-month pilgrimage from Korczowa to Santiago de Compostela, where he was walking the route of St. James with a trumpet and a backpack, playing solo in temples and on pastures. A great, profound story it was. And it was at this moment that we met in Lublin…
New album - Etad Vai Tad - and what next?
After the recordings, I listened to the raw mix for over a year and thought, and thought, and thought … I submerged into this music in various ways, intermittently, of course, so as not to go crazy. I struggled through various layers of these recordings, and each time its different aspects reached me. Every time I was discovering something there. After a long reflection, I finally decided which fragments are most important to me. I changed the concept several times until finally I chose 7 compositions, after consulting with Marta we settled with six of them. Marta’s suggestion to remove one of the tracks was truly invaluable. Only when I listened to the complete target material did I hear it clearly. Let me refer to the Sufi parable that comes to my mind: Once upon a time the great and venerable sage Mullah Nasreddin rode into Baghdad on a donkey, galloping as much as he could. A crowd of onlookers gathered at this unusual sight. Everyone was very curious about what this noble philosopher is looking for in such a great hurry.
„What are you looking for a mullah,” someone shouted from the crowd of onlookers.
„I’m looking for my donkey,” replied Nasreddin. Well, just like in the Polish fairy tale where Mr Hilary loses his glasses …
New album - Etad Vai Tad – That Is It.
“Etad Vai tad” in Sanskrit means “That is It”. This is also what I decided to name this material. I found the formulation in the novel by Thomas Mann entitled The Transposed Heads. Of course, it referred to a completely different situation, but as Canetti wrote … „inspiration is blind and even a little thing can set it on fire” … ??? … This music makes my head dizzy. It has a huge impact on how I approach creating now. The material on this album is completely improvised. Nothing was planned. Of course, I do not intend to focus all my, or our, future work only on completely improvised music but this particular session has chiselled many new paths in my imagination, paths that I will or will not follow. The option of a multitude of choices popped up in my head and the awareness that I do not have to decide on one path or the other is liberating. After all, I can go several ways. Why keep driving the same way to work? Each of them will bring a different adventure. I don’t know yet if it’s good or bad, but I know that this meeting with Marta and Piotrek is another, real breakthrough in our entire history. Something has happened in me and in all of us.
New album - Etad Vai Tad - Tatvamasi's most mysterious album.
I once read the Vedas in Sanskrit. After several weeks of deciphering these intricate paths, I went outside, looked up at the clouds, at the space around me, and then I knew exactly what „Etad Vai Tad” meant. This was it. It was an extremely clear message. As I stood there, looking at it and reliving that moment, my phone rang. I talked for a while and when I finished the conversation, I forgot everything and now I can’t remember what „Etad Vai Tad” means.
New album - Etad Vai Tad - or is it an anthem of a non-existent world?
Our new album is a theatre of contradictions. It is the music of a non-existent idea. The peculiarity of sound and experience. Spontaneous stories about a world that is difficult to access, distant because of its abstractness and irrationality. Our own tunnel of reality has been crushed under the weight of an unknown need, and our space-time has been destabilized. A different ground, a different smell. It’s not the wind, it’s not the colours. A Zen master might say „Everything happens as in the normal world, only the feet are above the ground by themselves.” Collectively created compositions are like the anthems of the Country-World that does not exist, has not been and will not be.
New album - Etad Vai Tad - philosophical paragraphs for insiders from Łukasz:
Great sounds for a music that is not there. Heavy, thick emptiness, fat deficiency, sober and serious madness. There is no such note, but it is not for real, in this positive sense, because it is somehow very wide and running away from being put on a shelf or being given a name, a genre and even more fleeing from the urge to fling.
You play the music with your ear. You throw away the scales, you do not crush on their edges, merging into ready-made associations, worn-out patterns. You play with intuition, you don’t look at your hands, your ear becomes the rudder, you skip the brain, you necessarily skip the brain. He did his job before, and so did the fingers, hands, feet. You have listened to hundreds of hours of when different souls walk up to the wall. Is it still music? Or maybe only this is the music, as it is totally here and now?
The only limitation, a potential pitfall in case of a failure, is „a matter of the day”. You can have a little fever; you can think of a phone that is not ringing or is ringing all the time. Don’t worry, this is exactly what will be heard in your music of that day!
The rules of each such play, session, concert are created anew, from scratch. You create them and at the same time they begin to create you. After all, what is around you flows into your consciousness just the way and only the way you can see it. So, you create what you see, the whole world. But at the same time you have no control over it, so the world creates you ☯ There is also the presence of the musicians, this dialogue between them, breaking the rules, questions, this is a very high level. The presence of the audience also makes the rules. The audience is involved. Everything only applies in this room and only for the duration of the play.
You have built a house, a barn, a gazebo where you are not even at home. So, after all, you leave it without any regrets.
Even if you say that you only play for yourself then you must admit that it came out of a need, just like that. Such was the order sanctioned by the fact that this is what is happening on the stage today. Among people.
After all, I am the world myself, playing for myself, so who am I playing for, if not for the world? How many albums sound as if they were recorded „only for me” at the time of creation – and then this turns out to be their main, great advantage? Their language, the gesture of reaching beyond all the limitations, the context always remains the current language of crossing, a bridge to.
The new album - Etad Vai Tad - I think about the unthinkable
Can the lack of philosophy be the philosophy of creation? Could no message be the message? Do I have to do something for a reason? Don’t I have to do something for a reason? Do we use our art to hammer nails into the rust of obvious music or rather into the rust in our heads? What needs, such questions. What questions, such answers. Again, all roads lead to a simple Zen formula:
“There is a mountain in the beginning.
Then there is no mountain.
Then it IS. „
New album - Etad Vai Tad - premiere soon
The album will be released on CD this fall by Requiem Records. It will be available for preorder soon. These recordings can be published thanks to the support of the Department of Culture of the City of Lublin (shout-out to Michał Karapuda), thanks to the support of the Centre of Culture in Lublin (shout-out to Rafał Koza Koziński) and thanks to my friends from the East to West Foundation (shout-out to Joanna Lewicka, Katarzyna Tadeusz and Marta Góźdź). Besides, I would not be able to do anything without the crew: Rafał Kucharczuk, Tomasz Gawdzik, Rafał Kraśkiewicz, Tomasz Kraśkiewicz, Lech Pukos, Tomasz Dziadczyk. Thank you, guys. The moonshine and the pickles are cooling in the refrigerator.
