Biography
Michał Jacaszek, recording most often under his surname alone, works as a Polish composer and producer whose output centers on unsettling electro-acoustic environments along with scores for cinema and stage productions. His first solo outing arrived in 2004 with the off-kilter miniatures of Lo-Fi Stories, yet the approach shifted sharply on 2008’s Treny, an album of fragile, mournful string writing and ghostly voices interwoven with digital artifacts. Later projects added Baroque instrumentation on Glimmer in 2011 and verse settings on Kwiaty in 2017, while the 2020 collection Music for Film offers a concise survey of his broader contributions to motion pictures.
Jacaszek entered the public eye in 2004 via Lo-Fi Stories, an instrumental set built from eccentric melodies and found sounds atop erratic electronic pulses. He also issued two albums alongside vocalist and poet Miłka Malzahn. As further recordings appeared across the decade, his textures grew increasingly restrained and quiet, even if occasional bursts of force and distortion persisted. The Norwegian imprint Miasmah issued the spectral 2008 album Treny, which drew widespread praise and drew parallels with Tim Hecker and William Basinski. Pentral followed in 2009, parts of which were captured inside three historic churches in Gdańsk, Poland.
Early in 2011 Jacaszek began working with Ghostly International through a track on the SMM: Context anthology alongside ambient peers Leyland Kirby, Svarte Grenier, and Rafael Anton Irisarri. Later that year he delivered his debut Ghostly full-length, Glimmer. In 2013 Narodowe Centrum Kultury released Piesni, Jacaszek’s reworkings of traditional Polish sacred songs. The next year Touch presented Catalogue des Arbres, his project with the contemporary ensemble Kwartludium. He rejoined Ghostly in 2017 for Kwiaty, a song-centered record drawing on seventeenth-century metaphysical verse. Bramy Nieba, recorded with the choral group Vocal Varshe, appeared in 2018 and captured the Grand Prix at that year’s Nowa Tradycja Festival. That October he took part in a commemorative performance honoring the victims of the Stutthof concentration camp at the Stutthof Museum; a studio version of the work was later issued as Stutthof: Apel Cieni. Ghostly released Music for Film in 2020, gathering scores created for dramas and documentaries across the preceding twelve years.
Jacaszek entered the public eye in 2004 via Lo-Fi Stories, an instrumental set built from eccentric melodies and found sounds atop erratic electronic pulses. He also issued two albums alongside vocalist and poet Miłka Malzahn. As further recordings appeared across the decade, his textures grew increasingly restrained and quiet, even if occasional bursts of force and distortion persisted. The Norwegian imprint Miasmah issued the spectral 2008 album Treny, which drew widespread praise and drew parallels with Tim Hecker and William Basinski. Pentral followed in 2009, parts of which were captured inside three historic churches in Gdańsk, Poland.
Early in 2011 Jacaszek began working with Ghostly International through a track on the SMM: Context anthology alongside ambient peers Leyland Kirby, Svarte Grenier, and Rafael Anton Irisarri. Later that year he delivered his debut Ghostly full-length, Glimmer. In 2013 Narodowe Centrum Kultury released Piesni, Jacaszek’s reworkings of traditional Polish sacred songs. The next year Touch presented Catalogue des Arbres, his project with the contemporary ensemble Kwartludium. He rejoined Ghostly in 2017 for Kwiaty, a song-centered record drawing on seventeenth-century metaphysical verse. Bramy Nieba, recorded with the choral group Vocal Varshe, appeared in 2018 and captured the Grand Prix at that year’s Nowa Tradycja Festival. That October he took part in a commemorative performance honoring the victims of the Stutthof concentration camp at the Stutthof Museum; a studio version of the work was later issued as Stutthof: Apel Cieni. Ghostly released Music for Film in 2020, gathering scores created for dramas and documentaries across the preceding twelve years.
Albums
