EABS

EABS, shorthand for Electro-Acoustic Beat Sessions, functions as a prize-winning future-jazz septet headquartered in Wroclaw, Poland. Their distinctive approach fuses traditional Polish jazz with hip-hop, jungle, funk, turntablism, free improvisation, gospel, electronic music, and modern composition to produce an idiosyncratic, personal strain of contemporary jazz. Compositions emerge through a deliberate process labeled reconstruction from deconstruction, which integrates sampling and looping directly into jazz improvisations. The 2017 debut album Repetitions (Letters to Krzysztof Komeda) offered bold reinterpretations of lesser-known works by the noted composer spanning 1962 to 1967, filtered through the band’s influences and thereby establishing a refined, rhythm-driven hybrid aesthetic that positioned them prominently within the new European jazz scene. U.K. saxophonist and flutist Tenderlonious appeared on the 2018 Kraksa/Svantetic EP and the subsequent 2019 release Slavic Spirits. The full-length homage Discipline of Sun Ra followed in 2020. The 2023 collaboration In Search of a Better Tomorrow with Lahore, Pakistan’s Jaubi garnered worldwide attention and enabled EABS to perform across Western Europe and China. Reflections of Purple Sun appeared in 2024; recorded as a tribute to Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stańko’s 1973 album Purple Sun, the set reworks each original composition via the group’s signature modern lens.

The ensemble originated in Wroclaw in 2011 under the full name Electro-Acoustic Beat Sessions. Core members comprise Marek Pędziwiatr on keyboard and vocals, Marcin Rak on drums, Vojto Monteur on electric guitar, Paweł Stachowiak on bass guitar, Olaf Węgier on saxophone, Jakub Kurek on trumpet, and Maciej Jakimiuk as sound engineer. Newest participant Spisek Jednego on record players succeeded turntablist and sampler Piotr Skorupski, also known as One Conspiracy. At inception the project existed more as a conceptual framework than a conventional group—an idea of reconstruction from deconstruction—mounted in homage to Black music traditions ranging from jazz to hip-hop, encompassing figures such as Ahmad Jamal, Gil Scott-Heron, J Dilla, Pete Rock, and Miles Davis. Most participants arrived via hip-hop rather than jazz as their foundational influence; jazz entered later when several members, concurrently music students, began exploring the sampled origins found on favored rap recordings. After two years of rehearsal and conceptual development, the first public performances occurred in 2013, at which point the press designated them Wrocław Artistic Discovery of the year and they received the WARTO prize.

The globally recognized Puzzle Mixtape surfaced on Astigmatic in 2016, featuring contributions from Coultrain, Ben Lamar Gay, Jeru the Damaja, and Paulina Przybysz. Signing with the label, the band issued Repetitions (Letters to Krzysztof Komeda) in 2017 and began presenting its material onstage. Gilles Peterson embraced the album and broadcast it, while additional DJs in London and Berlin incorporated it into their sets. The Mateusz Prize, conferred by Channel 3 of Polish Radio, was awarded for the recording. Following tours in support, the live document Repetitions (Letters to Krzysztof Komeda): Live at Jazz Club Hipnoza (Katowice) appeared a year later. Also in 2018 the group joined Tenderlonious for the twenty-five-minute, two-track EP Kraksa/Svantetic and undertook European dates together before commencing studio work on a successor. Turning toward Slavic mythology and Polish demonology while contemplating the present-day spiritual state of Poles, the musicians—including Tenderlonious—drew primary impetus from the enigmatic Slavic Melancholy for 2019’s Slavic Spirits, an effort to connect with the realm of a vanished ancient culture that, in their view, could never be exhaustively examined.

In October 2019, more than thirty-three years after the event, a concert recording of the Sun Ra Arkestra’s first Polish visit reached the public. EABS prepared a dedicated performance limited to Sun Ra compositions for the occasion; that event directly prompted the 2020 album Discipline of Sun Ra, containing reworked versions of pieces dating from 1957 to 1979. Resuming live activity in 2022, they released the intense digital-fusion collection 2061. The 2023 partnership with Lahore’s Jaubi produced In Search of a Better Tomorrow. Conceived and completed within a single week at Monochrom Studio in Poland’s Kłodzko Valley, the project marked an international breakthrough for both ensembles and opened touring routes across Western Europe and China.

Already in 2017 EABS had begun a collective preoccupation with Purple Sun, the uncommon, rhythmically intricate 1973 album by the late Polish jazz trumpeter and composer Tomasz Stańko. They mastered its compositions and inserted them into occasional live programs. In 2023 the musicians elected to redirect attention once more to Polish jazz, paralleling their earlier Komeda project, and selected Purple Sun for reinterpretation. Intensive rehearsals occupied the early months of the year, culminating in a sold-out preview concert at Wrocław’s National Forum of Music on March 26. Nine days afterward the group reconvened at the Rozbrat Street location in Warsaw that once housed Stańko’s apartment and now serves as headquarters for the foundation bearing his name. They constructed a temporary home studio within the low-ceilinged space, outfitting it with carpets, his piano, and trumpets. Marek Pędziwiatr performed on the piano while Jakub Kurek played one of the trumpets. Sessions took place during the fiftieth anniversary of Purple Sun’s original release. Issued in May 2024, Reflections of Purple Sun included a booklet containing extensive notes on the recording process and reproduced a near-identical rendering of the original front cover.