About

As a reminder, the album "Origins" was released on November 4, 2022, by NoPaper Records, and !K7 is responsible for worldwide distribution. The album hit the Polish Olis bestseller list and received excellent reviews.

Bartek Chacinski wrote in " Polityka" : "Cichy and Pudło aren't retro, they're keeping their finger on the pulse, and their motto, taken from Arthur C. Clarke – that "properly developed technology is indistinguishable from magic" – finds justification in the music."  Paweł Gzyl for  Nowa Muzyka  observed:
"Pudło and Cichy can improvise, but they can also create a charming melody. That's why "Origins" is simply a pleasure to listen to."
Maciej Kaczmarski devoted a longer piece to "Origins" in  "Dwutygodnik,"  concluding:  "Scalpel continues to freely juggle genres and continues to "cut with surgical precision" (...) And listening to "Origins" is like meeting long-lost, dear friends ." — (via Label)

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"Wow, this kind of music is still being released on !K7 Records?!?" is the inevitable question that comes to mind when listening to the new Skalpel album. The new work from the Polish duo Marcin Cichy and Igor Pudlo sounds almost exactly like one of the many IDM compilations that could have been released around the turn of the millennium on labels like Mo'Wax, Ninja Tune, or indeed !K7. The title "Origins," however, already indicates that precisely these associations are intentional.

Skalpel delve into their sources of inspiration from the 1990s and play with various currents of dance music and electronica that were fresh, exciting, and in some cases still in their infancy more than 20 years ago. And so, the majority of the 14 tracks sound like a pure nostalgia trip back to a time when an optimistic view of the potential of electronic music, and therefore a corresponding sense of new beginnings, prevailed. Like many acts of the time, Skalpel only later discovered that and how jazz sounds and samples could be combined with this type of music. That's why most of "Origins," with its proto-drum and bass and short soul vocals, doesn't really sound contemporary and even a bit dated. However, the album works quite well as a retro homage, and the way, for example, Indian tabla beats meet a concise, somewhat dissonant saxophone line in "Past and Future" is genuinely surprising. — (via HHV Mag)

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Label: No Paper Records / !K7 Records
Format: 2 x Vinyl, LP, Album, Stereo
Released: 2022
Genre: Electronic
Style: Downtempo, Trip Hop, Drum n Bass, Breakbeat, Balearic

File under: Downtempo
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