New Life for Classic Polish Grooves

For several years, producer and mixmaster 77cuts has presented a sample heavy critically acclaimed "Polish jazz / retro / lounge mixtape series" called Fonoteka (Tape Library) as Estrada Nagrania (Recording Stage) under the auspices of Krajowa Agencja Wydawnicza (National Publishing Agency).

From a fabulous tape catalog of Polish recordings and library music 77cuts  creates seamless releases of jazzy lounge, downtempo, soul, dance, space age pop, now sound, and hip hop beats. (Especially check out Printempo for hip hop beat. Many familiar samples there, such as Roger "Wildchild" McKenzie).

Here's a Google translation of the process:

... Ministry of Culture and Art in Warsaw central switch on the phone standing in a small room next to the minister. Switched to another phone number of the office is the head of the department. Behind the wall of this small room has its head office capital Estrada. Using the same phone line, its employees interact with all the musicians in the country. Created new recordings, records, stage performances - recorded hundreds of tapes. As usual in the history of popular music at the end of the decade began to emerge in a new style.... Developed so naturally and so - in principle - "quietly" that the general public does not realize this, it is at the threshold of a new era of style. But there are already hundreds of recorded tapes.

And from those tapes come 77cuts' new sounds. Several of the Fonoteka recordings as Estrada Nagrania and subsequent remixes are available for free download in '60s stylized blog and for purchase at Bandcamp.

However, the remixes, such as the newest volume, Fonoteka 7: Remixed, include Western samples. This detracts from the unique quality of the original mixes of studio tapes from Poland. This sentiment is echoed in something 77cuts once wrote (another Google translation):

Many critics believe that some musicians use today, for example, elements of Indian music and the blues, do not really know about Indian music and blues. Those critics are right - Recordings Estrada knows only Polish music. Thus was created the music for a period of time in Poland, the peace, the lack of stability. I barely hear it, but still the game will play loud and long.

That knowledge is exactly what makes the original Fonotekas so special.

licenses: uncertain due to sample clearances; released as Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial

** Videos after the jump...