GAŁGAŁ - Ich schwöre ich hab Angst

An unsound balance of twisted synth virtuosity opens the full-length debut album from Berlin based sound artist and Abstand co-founder Michał Krajczok. An absolute beginner, Krajczok in his project GAŁGAŁ shy away from his prolific background and producing skills and fell into an improvisational abyss by making a virtue of mistakes and glitches. Freeform structures make their own rules in the process of composition and the composer follows predetermined directions to continue his dialogue with synths in searching for the next mistakes. Far from being a conceptual exercise, Ich schwöre ich hab Angst is as playfully undogmatic as it is hyperdetailed and meticulous, carving out chaotic digitalia, freefallen sonic designs and controlled turmoil.

Inspired by John Cage’s call to the ‘pleasure of being slowly nowhere‘, Krajczok explores the late capitalism phenomena of freedom and nothingness, transformed into an inability to be present and attentive, leading to an almost unbearable, constant, and irritating wish to be somewhere else. The wild symmetry of Ich schwöre ich hab Angst creates sudden shifts of direction and hallucinatory warping of the stereo field into a sonic escapism full of humorous romanticism and naive beauty.

Biography

GAŁGAŁ is the solo project of Berlin-based musician and sound designer Michał Krajczok. His work is based on both composition and improvisation with a singular approach to modular synthesis. His musical procedures come from an occupation with the opposite poles of rationality and irrationality and a lean towards the idea of purposelessness and nothingness in art and music. According to this, Michał plays with different layers of certainty and uncertainty, organizing musical categories into determined and undetermined, underlining the possibility of failing and the tension immanent to errors.