T'ien Lai
T’ien Lai – the brand of cigarettes smoked by the protagonist of the novel The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick; loosely translated from Japanese, meaning “heavenly music.” The band was originally a duo of Łukasz Jędrzejczak and Jakub Ziołek, performing drone and noise music collages with old Polish Śnieżka radios. This phase of the band is most clearly captured in their 2013 album Da’at. Following it, the duo began to incorporate African and South American rhythms into their music, thus making it more rhythmic and predominantly based on samples. This period can be heard in the album RHTHM (2015), in which T’ien Lai's music approached tribal, industrial techno, combining aggressive electronics with live drum music. Currently, T’ien Lai consists of three members, including Qba Janicki, Łukasz Jędrzejczak, and Jakub Ziołek, with the focal point of their music being the clubs of Luanda, Lisbon, Durban, Kampala, Rio de Janeiro, and experiments with genres such as kuduro, gqom, and baile funk, which the artists refer to as "konk."
The Faustian theme of an endless energy source in Algol, leading to a social dystopia, the clash between nature and technology, and a philosophical critique of nature’s exploitation are ideas that captivate Jakub Ziołek in his ongoing projects, such as Kapital, Stara Rzeka, and Alameda. Together with T’ien Lai, a guest appearance will be made by Marek Pospieszalski, one of the most unique and versatile Polish saxophone performers.
