My New Favorite Music Genre Is Polish NoirThese 10 artists create music that is mystical, melancholy, magical, and more.
At first, I thought it might be pure coincidence. I kept hearing musicians from Poland who have some special vibe in their songs. For a long time, I didn’t even have a name to describe it. But I started calling it Polish Noir—for want of a better label. That’s not a perfect name. I wish I had a better term. But this music definitely deserves to be on your radar screen. So let me introduce you to it. If you want to support my work, please take out a premium subscription (just $6 per month).Yes, the music is noir—with a dark, elegiac tone, seeped in melancholy. But there’s also an ecstatic quality in these artists, and I find it uplifting. No, it’s not Brat. It’s not ready for TikTok—and never will be. You won’t get Physical with Polish noir, but maybe Metaphysical. That’s because these songs often possess a trance-like quality—even when they slap, they still float. Perhaps I’m projecting my own inner mystic here, but this music invites it. You can’t help but feel that these musicians are plugged into some higher realm, wired into an altered mental state that inspires their creative outpourings.
For whatever reason, a transcendent quality shapes their work. These recordings don’t feel like commercial releases, or entertainment products. Their performances instead evoke a ritualistic quality that I find inspiring, especially given the intense branding-and-influencer orientation of the current music business. Today I’ll focus on ten recording artists. None of these are household names (yet). 1.The first Polish musician of this temperament to captivate me was Hania Rani. I’ve written about her in the past, but I’ll share this video again because it is a perfect introduction to this kind of music.  I was shocked when I saw this video, because I had previously known Rani only as a singer of eerie art songs. They are completely different from her piano music, but share that same ritualistic, mystical ethos.  Here’s a track from Rani’s new album released a few weeks ago. This music is as fresh as the morning rain—and actually sounds like it to.
But I’m now hearing many other musicians from this same part of the world who evoke similar qualities with their work—trance-inducing, in-the-moment, and psychologically deep. Let’s meet the rest of this intriguing cohort... Keep reading with a 7-day free trialSubscribe to The Honest Broker to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives. A subscription gets you:
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My New Favorite Music Genre Is Polish Noir
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