It is no secret that Poland has a vibrant and creative alternative music scene that has produced a plethora of amazing acts, most of which we try to cover here on IDIOTEQ. Although it does not have such a huge international reach and recognition, instrumental post rock act MINDSEDGE are starting to becoming one of the first names that comes to your mind when you think about Polish post rock and instrumental music. It is with great pleasure that we present the premiere of their new album called “Shades”, an adventurous effort that proves the band continue to grow in their writing style which becomes clearly evident on this particular offering. Listen below and tell us what you think in the comments below.
The album will release on the 1st of October (physically) and on the 15th digitally. Listen below and scroll down to see what the band has to say about the background of the album.
We are proud to present to you our new album – “Shades”. We’ve taken a different approach than on the first album “Theta”. First and foremost – gone are the longish creepy ambient tracks that broke up the flow. We wanted this record to flow smoothly and be much more positive, despite retaining the dramatic feel of the previous record. The songs feel tighter and more structured.
It took us over 4 years to record a follow-up to our debut “Theta”. Over those years we’ve had to split up with our guitarist and held try outs for a new band member but no one could fill his shoes, so we decided to play as a three-piece.
We’ve scrapped a few songs that we already played live with him and started writing new ones to complete the set we wanted to fit onto the album. We did leave a part of a song he wrote as a sort of tribute to his presence – the very initial part of Snowstorm.
We chose Red Yeti Studio because Tomek, it’s owner, engineer and producer was the perfect person to help us make the album. He always was there to help with advice or suggestions that inevitably improved the tracks (adding an effect here, or playing something underneath there)..
Writing songs for one guitar proved to be quite a challenge, since there are far fewer opportunities to use harmonies between instruments. As a guitarist, I had to completely rethink the way I played. I’ve started utilizing full chords and stopped relying solely on power chords. Switching to a seven-string guitar really helped enrich the tone. Thankfully, Daniel, our bassist is amazing at coming up with interesting and unobvious basslines that always compliment all the instruments. Shapeshifter, the track he came up with is a sort of a throwback to the first album, it’s heavier, more “metal” and even somewhat psychedelic but I’ve managed to put my own spin on it with fast strumming and a rich texture in the later part of the song.
Michał, our drummer added a repinique drum, usually used in samba music; it really added an extra punch to a few vital moments (such as the build-up before the ending in Vipassana). He really outdid himself with heavy drumming on this record. The aforementioned Vipassana and Shapeshifter were quite demanding tracks that required precision and speed.
Shades, the titular track is unique in a few ways. It is a redoing of Michał’s old song that he recorded along with Daniel in their old band. He wrote it himself but we wanted to put a new “Mindsedge” spin on it… so we made it sound nothing like a Mindsedge song. It’s somewhat ambient and poppy at the same time (even if it’s twice as long as your run-of-the-mill pop-song) and features vocals by Małgorzata Pawłowska (who you can also hear on Pathways) as well as keyboards by our good friend, jazz guitarist and former “caretaker” of the community centre we rehearse at to this day – Piotr Grudziński (who is not recently departed guitarist of RIVERSIDE).
Another unique thing about it is that it was recorded with instruments downtuned to 432Hz instead of 440Hz. It made them sound deeper, perhaps somewhat broken but also very warm. We feel like it was a good choice. We hope you’ll enjoy listening to the album as much as we enjoyed making it!
