Zimna Płyta

A release by 100nka, a band connected to the Tri-City (Trójmiasto) circle of Polish improvised music, here joined by saxophonist and clarinetist Mikołaj Trzaska — co-leader of the legendary group Miłość and a key figure of the Polish yass movement. Zimna Płyta ('Cold Record') was the band's debut, recorded in September 2004 at the Alchemia club in Kraków and issued in December by Not Two. It reflects the playful, genre-skirting spirit of that scene, where free jazz met punk attitude and song forms.

Founded in 2004 around a trio of young players — built, as the band liked to joke, on a 90-year-old double bass, drums from 1956, and an electric guitar with serious wattage — 100nka came up fascinated equally by jazz classics like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Ornette Coleman and by contemporary downtown and groove-oriented players such as Tim Berne, Jim Black, Ellery Eskelin, and Medeski Martin & Wood. That double inheritance is audible across Zimna Płyta's thirteen tracks: wild, fast, freely improvised music anchored by hard-driving rhythm-section grooves and a guitar that dances over the top, somewhere between downtown jazz energy and rock muscle. Trzaska guests on four tracks, his reeds sharpening the album's raw, restless edge.