||ALA|MEDA||

||ALA|MEDA|| (also known as ALAMEDA 5) is one of the most innovative and original bands to emerge on the Polish alternative scene in recent years. For nearly a decade, they have been creating music that defies classification and blends various genres, leading them to develop their own unique style based on constant metamorphosis.
Whether it was the noisy, jazz-inspired neo-krautrock of *Duch Tornada* (Instant Classic, 2015) or the polyrhythmic avant-prog of *Eurodrome* (Instant Classic, 2019), the results of the group’s creative explorations have always yielded music that is inventive, surprising, and transcends the clichés of musical canons.
The band’s new project, titled “Spectra” (Brutality Garden, 2022/2024), offers an original reinterpretation of traditional and modern rhythms characteristic of Africa and South America, which were also present to a lesser extent on previous albums. The group’s new sound is based on a strongly syncopated rhythm performed by two percussionists (Jacek Buhl, Rafał Iwański) and a bassist (Piotr Michalski), who provide the framework for the wild post-internet and deconstructed electronic collages created by Łukasz Jędrzejczak and Jakub Ziołek. This new artistic direction is “spectral” in many senses: it creates a continuum of diverse musical tropes, blending such disparate genres as gqom, free jazz, UK bass, krautrock, IDM, post-industrial, and batida into a single, multifaceted whole.

The result is a one-of-a-kind tropical-industrial blend where avant-garde meets Afro-house, and elaborate sampling and granular synthesis techniques are intertwined with the frenetic playing of a live rhythm section. The guiding principle behind the band’s new work is the total integration of electronics with live performance and the blurring of all boundaries between high and low art, sophisticated and vulgar creativity, the avant-garde and entertainment, music “for the soul” and music “for the body.” However, this is not a postmodern feast for weary souls, nor an expression of nostalgic longing for a long-lost unity with Nature, but a new realism in an ever-changing world.
The band ||ALA|MEDA|| is famous for its incredibly intense and euphoric concerts, which have earned them appearances at festivals such as: OFF Festival, Bedem Fest in Montenegro, Square – Mapping the Atlantic in Portugal, Colours of Ostrava, Positive Futures in Innsbruck, Wine Nat White Heat in Nantes and Paris, Jaiyede Jazz in Odense, Sharpe in Bratislava, Avant Art in Warsaw and Wrocław, Ethniesy in Bydgoszcz, Katowice JazzArt Festival, Unsound in Kraków, and many others. The group consists of five experienced artists representing different generations of musical innovators: Jacek Buhl (Jachna/Mazurkiewicz/Buhl, Trytony), Rafał Iwański (Voices of the Cosmos, HATI, Innercity Ensemble), Łukasz Jędrzejczak (T’ien Lai, Javva), Piotr Michalski (3moonboys), and Jakub Ziołek (T’ien Lai, Stara Rzeka, Jantar, Innercity Ensemble). The band’s sound engineer is Szymon Szwarc (RZWD, SKI).