Alameda + Róża

On its new album, Alameda sheds the cloak of rock music for good and turns up to maximum the African and Latin American rhythmic influences already present on The Spirit of the Tornado (2015, Instant Classic) and Eurodrome (2019, Instant Classic), and both the original, ethnic and the modern, club music. The key word is "batida", an Angolan-derived musical style with a distinctive euphoric and syncopated rhythm, which Alameda 5 develops in its own fashion by adding influences from industrial, post-punk, gqom, dub and vaporwave. The result is a unique tropical-industrial mix, where avant-garde meets afro-house, and extensive sampling and granular synthesis techniques are coupled with the frenetic play of a live rhythm section. The idea behind Alameda's new work is total integration of electronics with live playing and blurring of all divisions between high and low art, sophisticated and vulgar creation, avant-garde and entertainment, music "for soul" and music "for body". Róża, on the other hand, is a band led by Małgorzata Penkalla, Szymon Lechowicz and Kamil Hordyniec, artists known from the Enchanted Hunters, Sorja Morja and Wilga groups, as well as the Warsaw Polonia Disco collective. Róża plays catchy alternative pop, drawing on many seemingly contradictory genres of popular music, such as post punk, r&b, synth pop, grunge and emo. The band's Polish-language songs are unsettling, but not without a sense of humour.