The Complainer
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The Complainer

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"Review Album 2005"

It seems that virtually ever other record in recent months harks back to 80s styles and strategies, but in such painfully literal rather than lateral ways that one's interest is seldom engaged. Skinny ties and choppy guitars, stodgy drum machines and comically rigid sequencer patterns, histrionically bellowed vocals intoning meaninglessly arch lyrics - never has the 'so bad it's good' maxim/excuse come down quite so heavily on the first two words.
Perhaps it's simply that irony is the last refuge of the programmer who can't be bothered to get to grips with modern software. Whatever, we're one step away from an electroclash version of "The Birdie Song", mark my words. Enter The Complainer, a grumpy old electro-grouch who's here to show the sneery kitschophiliacs with their 100 quid mullets how retro should be done. Firstly, this Complainer (Wojt3k Kucharczyk, founder of Polish label Mik.Musik, which is also home to the great 8Rolek) is in his mid-thirties, and so can justifiably claim to be in possesion of the necessary insight into the 80s zeitgeist. Secondly, his Polish upbringing allows him a certain detachment, enabling him to filter the essence of the times through his individual sensibilities instead of simply aping the moves of another age. Thirdly, he loves the music enough to put it to work in new ways rather than patronising it by simple quotation or imitation.
What Kucharczyk does is part covering, part sampling, part bootleg-mixing, part plunderphonics. However, the gritty immediate results of his metodology - niftily dubbed "Quotadelia" on one track - make for top entertainment. Still, there's a darker side to the album than that might suggest. It's almost as if the glitzy but detached echoes of music most commonly associated with empty, rampant hedonism have been transformed into signifiers of personal torment and political uncertainty. The key track, "Be My Boney M Of Love", a grey, haunted dirge ("Babylon is the place/Far away") evokes loss and dislocation with quite some power.
(Keith Moline)
- The Wire N° 257


"Various Polish media"

«This is the masterpiece, which couldn’t be disgrace for likes as Talking Heads. It is hard to believe,
that this is work by one polish Wojtek Kucharczyk living in tiny Skoczów. Outstanding.» (DZIENNIK/KULTURA)
«There was no such original and moving album in the history of polish electronic music! And in our country there is no other such experienced and ingenious artist as Wojtek Kucharczyk.» (PRZEKRÓJ)
«Kucharczyk is not showing his fascination with Prince, David Byrne, Jamie Lidell or Caetano Veloso any more. He exactly just released album, which can stand next to the best work of these artists.». (CANTI ILLUMINATI/SITKA RADIO)
«...splendid album and to write about inspirations of it’s author would be a sin. This is the unique specimen, could stand in one row with «Multiply», « My Life in the Bush of Ghosts», «Sung Tongs» or «Mirrored». Awesome!.» (INDEPENDENT.PL)
«In the whole meaning of this word - this time it is music. As usual spontaneousness and the sense of humor are dominating. But also melody is not bad here. ...this is album about variety of the world.» (AKTIVIST)
«Revelation!» (GERY.PL) - about last album 2007


Discography

THE COMPLAINER - & THE COMPLAINERS (2007)
THE COMPLAINER - Mastered At The Dusk EP (2007)
THE COMPLAINER - MINUS BRAVO (2006)
THE COMPLAINER - sponsored by *retro*sex*galaxy* (2005)
THE COMPLAINER - BE MY BONEY M OF LOVE superfreeSP (2005)

Photos

Bio

Artist: The Complainer
Album: The Complainer & The Complainers
Label: mik.musik.!., 2007

Playing for the first time as a band for The Complainer,
the legendary Wojciech Kucharczyk is a real leader, impulsing a strong and energic live performance.Originally members of the Mik Musik label as solo artists, this trio has a closed relationship that is easy to feel when they perform together.Going from quiet ballads to crazyness of electronic rythm, and crossing pop and rock sounds, this show is a complete performance. Audience has no choice to come into the music, dance, jump… scream!!!Famous to be always at the «avant-garde» of the polish scene, The Complainer is now keeping himself on this road, with an entire professionalism,
improving days after days his capacity to entertain people and to open themselves to his conception of music and live-acts.

Check videos of the band on the Myspace profile!!
www.myspace.com/thecomplainer

Additionnal Bio:
THE COMPLAINER TOURS AGAIN
By Randall Beaver

The Musical Tourist: From Poland to the World

For many years known as Wojt3k, the enigmatic mik.musik.!. label head, graphic designer (”thesigner”) and veteran of Molr Drammaz and countless other music projects produced this, his second full length release as The Complainer (TC), in a period of desperation. Facing a particularly rough time in his personal life, the wildly prolific artist and Poland-based Renaissance man was struggling just to make it through the basic rigors of each day. Through it all he came up with an album he says will be hard to surpass.

What kind of music did this produce? Somewhat unexpectedly for aficionados of his label, it’s a global pop tour de force. For all its quirks, the overriding sonic theme is that of global simulacra (i.e. Disney World-ish) musical landscapes orchestrated with sincerity and desperation, like a sentimental trip around the world with 30 days left to live. These are the sounds of our times, sung in the colonial international language of English, peppered with his native Polish and touching on many of the world’s most popular and obscure languages (check out the “Spanish” of “Oigame Compay”). Overall, the words serve more as texture than anything - and many of the most moving words aren’t in any recognizable language. Molrian, the “fake” language of the land called Molr, a “country” invented by Wojt3k at the infancy of his musical explorations, also makes an indelible appearance here. Somehow it all makes sense. The non-language describes the world better than any “real” one.

Wojciech, as he prefers to be called now, invited many guests from all over the world to collaborate on the album (only participants from Antarctica are missing). “Each contributor brought something unique and genuine. Even if only one word was given, it was always said with significance.” Some collaborators prepared long vocal or instrumental parts, which he has described as “amazing and heartshaking.”

Cut and Paste but Glued Tight

So what’s it like? One way to describe having listened to the album is how you feel after you’ve left EPCOT for a long day. Inspired. Exhausted. Not exactly sure exactly where you were or what happened. Did we visit other countries? Was that real? Fake? Corporately controlled? Whatever. It doesn’t make a difference. The beats often sound clinically manufactured (indeed culled from various samples and sources) and non-sequitur lyrics are matched in number only by the non-sequitur sounds. Still, any alien from any planet (including Earth) would still recognize it as a pop album. As Stanley Kubrick would say, the truth is the “feel” of it rather than the “think” of it. And just like Disney World should be seen as a museum of contemporary American culture, THE COMPLAINER & THE COMPLAINERS should be seen as a soundtrack to our (global) times, or, at least, a soundtrack to some of its rides.