Polish and Scottish modern music

The Scottish modern music as the modern Polish music consist of many kinds like pop, rock, hip-hop, dance, instrumental and punk. In both countries music is a very important part of people's life and that's why it’s worth comparing.

Pop music

Travis

Travis is a Scottish quartet (Fran Healy on vocals, Andy Dunlop on guitar) that plays pop (how original). Their 1996 singles, including All I Want To Do Is Rock, U16 Girls and Tied To The 90's, are catchy, soulful, refined and vaguely recall Radiohead. Mostly, they ring with echoes of the British melodic tradition. The album Good Feeling (Independiente, 1997) collects the early tracks and adds filler that ranges from Oasis-grade disposable pop (The Line Is Fine) to Replacements-tinged teenage anthems (Midsummer Nights Dreamin').

The Man Who (Independiente, 1999), a best selling album in the UK, has little to commend itself. The sound is copied from late Pink Floyd and Radiohead. The catchy Why Does It Always Rain On Me is creative as anything their friend Britney Spears has done. The rest is split between trivial refrains and sleep-inducing ballads (Luv).

The Invisible Band (Independiente, 2001) is one long yawn. The potential hits are packed at the beginning (Sing, Dear Diary, Side) and they are not exactly Beethoven's Ninth. The rest is even less entertaining.

12 Memories (Epic, 2003) has even fewer potential hits (Re-Offender, the touching Something Else), but, in a rare feat of lack of imagination, it manages to ape the Beatles at their most morose (Peace the Fuck Out, Walking Down the Hill, Quicksand) and U2's tedious political sermons (Peace The Fuck Out, The Beautiful Occupation).

   Anita Lipnicka

Anita Lipnicka was born on June 13th 1975, in Piotrków Trybunalski, in Poland. In primary school she took music lessons on violin. 

She started singing in secondary school with a group of her friends. This band was called  'Certificado'.

In 1996 Anita decided to undertake a solo career. She recorded three beautiful solo albums.

In 2002  she met John Porter. They started working on a new common project. Their album titled "Indecent songs" came out in Poland in November 2003. 

 

Hefner

Breaking God's Heart (Too Pure, 1998) contains a few of their classics: Love Will Destroy us in the End, The Sweetness Lies Within, The Librarian and A Hymn for the Postal Service.

Harmonica, organ, horns and a female co-singer enhance the sound of The Fidelity Wars (Too Pure, 1999). Two more "hymns" (Hymn For The Cigarettes, Hymn For The Alcohol) and a few passionate stories (Don't Flake Out On Me, Every Little Gesture, I Took Her Love for Granted ) continue the saga of Hayman.

Boxing Hefner (Too Pure, 2000) collects singles and rarities.

We Love The City (Too Pure, 2000) is a concept album dedicated to the city of London. The theme of urban life (for better and worse) permeates the ditties We Love The City, The Great London Radio, The Greedy Ugly People, Good Fruit, that swing between early Kinks and late Beach Boys. But the music tends to be generically melodic, to the expense of the rural eccentricity of the beginnings.

Dead Media (Too Pure, 2001) harks back to 1980s' synth-pop but is equally uninspired.

Jack Hayler of Heffner debuted solo with the spartan folk ballads of Practical Wireless (Absolutely Kosher, 2002).

Stereo Morphofonium is Darren Hayman's electronic side project.

Brathanki is an explosive mixture of rock music and folk elements from different ethnic groups. the band was established in the end of 1998 by Janusz Mus. The band is formed with leading polish instrumentalists: J.Krolik, P.Krolik, A.Prucnal, G.Pietek and S.Blaszczynski. From the beginning, the vocalist of Brathanki was Halinka Mlynkova who gifted with an interesting and orginal voice. The first album of this badn was called "Ano!" and turned out to be one of the greatest music events of that year.

Dance music

The Beta Band (originally The Pigeons), hailing from rural Scotland, made an artistic splash with their first three EPs, that, far from being the ritual catchy, image-building, marketing-savvy singles of British bands, broke more than one convention. They will be collected in The Three EPs (Astralwerks, 1999). The singer whispers frail lullabys while the band strums along half asleep, producing a cross between Meat Puppets and Pink Floyd. Moreover, the percussive element rules, like in a played down Crash Worship. Finally, myriad of background and foreground noises dot the soundscape.

Champion Versions (EMI, 1997) revelead their skills in merging the relaxed hedonism of acid-rock and the dehumanized shuffle of dance music. Dry The Rain provokes frigid hippie vibrations with its brand of roots-rock tainted by languid psychedelic Syd Barrett-ian indolence, its crescendo of hypnotic orchestral arrangements and vocal harmonies. I Know weaves softly humming and strumming guitars into a delicate trance over a thick percussiive carpet. B+A enhances the method by erasing the vocals, multiplying the guitars and drums noise to shoegazing levels, and stretching the melodies to become Tibetan drones. The Ep is crowned by Dogs Got A Bone, a colloquial ballad enlivened and spaced out by quirky noises and minimalist patterns of accompaniment.

Gordon Anderson, mentally unstable, left the Beta Band after this recording, which was mainly his brainchild.

The Patty Patty Sound (EMI, 1998) shows a more careful "staging" of the music, and a more marked dance factor. Inner Meet Me opens with surreal bleeps of synthesizer, the usual rhythmic strumming of the guitars doubles into a vaguely exotic/tribal jamming studded with electronic hisses and stifled by subsonic vocals. Monolith, the culmination of Beta Band's intense sound sculpting, veers decidedly towards world-music but encages it in an envelop of natural sounds and bizarre samples. With this collage, the band abandons trance for the sake of trance and adopts the more sophisticated stance of the sound manipulator. The experiments peak with The House Song, a voodoo/techno dance that throws chirping electronics and a wild assortment of dissonances in the mix. She's The One opens with a Laurie Anderson-style tongue twister but the powerful percussive base leads to a guitar and organ gospel/jazz jam.

After that orgy, Los Amigos Del Beta Bandidos (EMI, 1998) sounds like a retreat. The exotic psalm and martial pace of Push It Out erect a magnetic atmosphere of gothic suspense and religious abandon. The vocal harmonies of Dr Baker approach the intensity of a cappella gregorian chants, until a devastating break of guitars unchains a piano carillon that bestows on the song a fairy-tale quality. It's Over marks a return to the simple, low-key ballad (with a touch of Third Eye Blind), as does the organ-driven psychedelic trance of Needles In My Eyes. 

Rock

Ildlewild 

Idlewild were the "next big thing" of the month for a few weeks in 1998, but, in reality, were professional epigons of R.E.M. The band, formed in Scotland by guitarist Rob Jones and singer Roddy Woomble, debuted with the usual sequence of singles, and EPs: Queen Of The Troubled Teens (1997), Chandelier (Fierce Panda, 1997), the mini-album Captain (Deceptive, 1997), A Film For The Future (Capitol, 1998), Everyone Says You're So Fragile, I'm The Message. To the British press it was yet another "next big thing", but to everybody else they were simply teenagers with an Husker Du fixation, and their melodic hardcore was not all that original, although occasionally it was indeed brilliant.

Hope Is Important (Capitol, 1999), that packed 12 songs in just under 36 minutes, was not a revelation, and certainly not a revolution, but it did feature a punk-pop gem like When I Argue I See Shapes and a few captivating ditties (You'Ve Lost Your Way, You Don't Have The Heart, I'm Happy To Be Here Tonight, Paint Nothing).

The singles Little Discourage (1999), one of their catchiest songs, and Actually It's Darkness (2000) proved that it had been no accident, and at least three songs on the album 100 Broken Windows (Food, 2000), These Wooden Ideas, Roseability and I Don't Have The Map, confirmed their talent.

Myslovitz 

1992 it is the year when there was a new band formed at the Youth Center in Mysłowice, and its name was The Freshman. The act was founded by two university students: Artur Rojek (on vocals and guitars), and Wojtek Powaga (on guitars). The original line-up was also reinforced with two more men: Marcin 'Bongo' Porczek (on drums), and Rafał 'Prince' Cieślik (on bass-guitar) who had been given his nickname because of his love for Prince's music. As the above-mentioned team, the act had never done any gig. The Freshman's first concert was held at the 'Olimp' Club of the University of Physical Education in Katowice, where they were playing as General Stillwell's support (another band from Mysłowice). At that time, Marcin Porczek and Rafał Cieślik were replaced by the Kuderski brothers - Jacek (on bass-guitar), and Wojtek (on drums), who both had formerly been responsible for DKT 's rhythm section (DKT = Der Kinder Trager). In the summer, the group finished recording its debut album 'Myslovitz' at the studios of Radio Łódź, and the producer of the album was Ian Harris from Manchester, a psychologist by profession (according to his own words) who had never worked as a shrink, however. Instead, he had made his name as the man responsible for the live sounds of Joy Division, UK Subs, New Order and The Exploited! He has been living in France for a dozen years or so, cooperating with an experimental band named Sysigambis. The album entitled 'Myslovitz' was released on October the 10th, being promoted by its title song 'Myslovitz' - according to the band's '3 times M principle'. The album was soon appreciated by critics as the most interesting album of the year of 1995, and the leading rock magazines in Poland described Myslovitz as the most promising Polish band of the year (the 'Brum' magazine granted them the 'best debut of the year' category; the 'Tylko Rock' magazine recognized them as 'The best hope of the year', they were also nominated for Dance Music Awards in the 'Pop and Rock Debuts' category, and the country-wide RMF FM Radio awarded them the special award 'The Unappreciated '95'). "The Road To Edinburgh"

Myslovitz, along with Skin, will be supporting the Scottish band Travis during their free concert in London. The concert will be a part of the anniversary celebration of MTV Music Awards and it will take place on 29 September in Royal Festival Hall. The fans of Myslovitz, Skin and Travis, who won't be able to participate in the event, will have a chance to watch an hour-long broadcast of the performances, which MTV will be airing from 9 October throughout Europe. It is estimated that 113 million viewers on the whole continent will watch the show. The London gig is just one of many shows put together under the name "The Road to Edinburgh". The one-hour programme is being prepared in order to celebrate the 10th anniversary of MTV Europe Music Awards; this year's gala will be held in Scotland. Twenty of the most important moments of former festivities will be broadcast during the show. Next "The Road to Edinburgh" concerts will take place in Symphony Hall, Birmingham (11 October), Palace Theatre, Manchester (19 October) and Opera House in Newcastle (26 October).

Nominations to MTV EMA 2003 awards will be announced shortly! The joint Myslovitz-Travis-Skin concert will be re-broadcast by all European MTV stations.